BG Reads 5.29.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - May 29, 2024

May 29, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

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May 29, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Across Austin, Street Impact Fees are being collected but not yet spent (Austin Monitor)

🟣 Half of Austin's 911 calls during busy times aren't answered fast enough, special report finds (KUT)

🟣 House Speaker Dade Phelan wins runoff, surviving challenge by Texas GOP’s far-right forces (Texas Tribune)

Read On!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

Highlights include:

🟣 Two Dallas city hall executives joining T.C. Broadnax

🟣 A potential Climate Fee brewing at Austin City Hall

🟣 The search from Austin's next Police Chief

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Across Austin, Street Impact Fees are being collected but not yet spent (Austin Monitor)

Though none of the money has been spent, two years of collecting Street Impact Fees has netted a potential $17 million in roadway capacity projects for Austin roads.

Curious members of the Downtown Commission got an update on the city’s Street Impact Fee program from Transportation & Public Works supervising engineer Nathan Aubert at their most recent meeting. Though the Street Impact Fee officially went into effect when the ordinance was adopted in December 2020, collection didn’t begin until June 21, 2022.

The fees, which are part of an effort to make development pay for itself, help fund roadway capacity projects that are provoked by new construction. To date, the city has invoiced for more than $17 million in Street Impact Fees, collecting about $8.6 million so far.

Unsurprisingly, according to a table of fees broken down by City Council district, the highest invoiced amount is in District 9 (which includes the persistently crane-heavy downtown) at about $4 million. Districts 1, 2 and 3 have over $2 million invoiced. And District 6 has the least invoiced (by far) at $325,300... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Half of Austin's 911 calls during busy times aren't answered fast enough, special report finds (KUT)

A special report looking into Austin’s 911 call-taking during times of high demand revealed improvements are needed to ensure faster answering times.

The National Emergency Number Association says 90% of calls to 911 should be answered in 15 seconds or less. On average, the report found about 77% of calls in Austin were answered within this time frame in 2022 and 2023. However, when the number of calls for help was higher than normal, only about 50% of calls were answered within 15 seconds.

“Higher call volumes usually resulted in longer wait times for callers, and more callers hung up as volumes increased,” the report states.

Austin does not have protocols in place for when this happens, the auditors found…(LINK TO FULL STORY)

As federal funds decrease, Council to consider future funding for homelessness (Austin Monitor)

With the city nearly exhausted of the federal money dedicated to providing housing for people who are homeless, City Council will likely direct staff to adjust and improve processes, in coordination with Travis County, for short-term assistance and long-term housing and services.

A recent joint meeting of the Public Health and Housing & Planning committees saw the passage of a recommendation for Council to consider a number of steps related to both rapid rehousing assistance and permanent supportive housing.

The steps include finding ways to optimize the waitlist process for both forms of housing, improving the path to permanent supportive housing units and services for those currently receiving temporary housing assistance, and working with relevant agencies and philanthropic groups to evaluate the current and future state of homelessness in the area.

The meeting included a joint presentation from the Homeless Services Office, the Housing Department and representatives from Travis County’s recently formed Supportive Housing Initiative, which showed that the city has spent more than $94 million of the $95.3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) that Council allocated toward homelessness programs… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

House Speaker Dade Phelan wins runoff, surviving challenge by Texas GOP’s far-right forces (Texas Tribune)

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, the top electoral target for a far-right faction of Republicans intent on controlling the Legislature, emerged victorious Tuesday over a well-funded challenger endorsed by Donald Trump and his allies.

Phelan defeated former Orange County Republican Party chairman David Covey, who also had the backing of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton and former Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi. In doing so, he avoided the ignominious fate of becoming the first House speaker to lose a primary in 52 years.

With all precincts reporting, Phelan was up 366 votes — within the margin that Covey can call for a recount. Covey, however, conceded in a speech to supporters at his election night party in Orange shortly after 9:30 p.m.

Phelan, 48, who has seen his popularity plummet among Republicans since he backed the impeachment of Paxton on corruption and bribery charges exactly one year and one day ago, was defiant in his victory speech at JW’s Patio in Beaumont…(LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas House runoffs bring wave of GOP incumbent defeats, give Abbott votes for school vouchers (Texas Tribune)

A wave of Republican incumbents were swept out of the Texas House in Tuesday's primary runoffs, including a handful who opposed school vouchers last fall, handing Gov. Greg Abbott a tentative majority in the lower chamber on his signature issue.

With most ballots counted across the state, six of the eight GOP House members who were forced into overtime appeared to lose their runoffs, continuing a surge of anti-establishment energy that had already led to the ouster of nine House Republicans in the March primary.

The runoffs brought mixed results for Texas' hard right: the House gained a pro-voucher majority — for now — and the 15 GOP incumbents ousted by insurgent challengers across both rounds of the primary amounted to a record. But House Speaker Dade Phelan, the top target of the party's rightmost faction, survived his runoff, setting the stage for a period of major turbulence and uncertainty for the lower chamber as it shifts even further right.

As the runoff results took shape, Abbott declared that the House "now has enough votes to pass school choice," the term used by voucher supporters to describe measures that provide taxpayer funds for private school tuition… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Near-collisions at airports loom large in summer travel worries (Politico)

Last year marked at least a seven-year high in near-collisions among commercial jets — with the summer accounting for nearly half, according to a POLITICO analysis of federal data. And as a new travel season dawned this weekend, the next few months are expected to bring record-breaking traffic to the skies, testing airlines, airports and the Federal Aviation Administration’s overworked, understaffed air traffic controllers.

The surge of incidents in which planes nearly collided while landing or taking off, or narrowly averted crashing into one another on the tarmac, has added to nervousness about the safety of U.S. aviation — on top of worries about Boeing’s quality control problems and grumbling about delayed and canceled flights. The number of incidents has fallen so far this year, but two reported near-crashes last month in New York and Washington have kept up the pressure on regulators and airlines to avoid the next mass fatality in the skies.

Continued struggles to accommodate soaring demand for air travel since the pandemic have added to the strains. Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot and spokesperson for its pilots union, said haste has been a culprit in “the recent near-tragedies.” “With the summer high-demand travel season stretching the safety seams, it will be critically important to just slow down,” he said in an interview.

“Every pilot, air traffic controller, mechanic, airline and the FAA need to slow down and take a minute for safety.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who chairs the Senate Commerce panel overseeing aviation, chalked last year’s poor performance up to “a combination of workforce, as well as just how congested our airspace really is.” And with the airline industry predicting that air travel will churn out roughly 26,000 flights per day this summer, Duckworth said she’s “concerned about it.” “It’s something we have to keep our eyes on,” she said... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Claudia Sheinbaum is likely to be Mexico’s next president. Who is she? (Washington Post)

Claudia Sheinbaum was fuming. The presidential candidate held a comfortable lead in the polls as her party’s primary got underway last summer. But one afternoon, as she was entering a hotel for a meeting, she was confronted by dozens of her top rival’s supporters, chanting that the contest was rigged. The normally stoic Sheinbaum strode inside and upbraided Alfonso Durazo, the official coordinating the primaries for the Morena party. “Wherever I arrive, I want to be respected,” she declared, jabbing the table. “Do you understand?”

The scene, captured on video, went viral. “We’d never seen Claudia Sheinbaum this way, with this strong character, this anger,” noted TV journalist Joaquin López-Dóriga. Sheinbaum, 61, is poised to make history as Mexico’s first female president and first Jewish head of state.

Polls a week before Mexico’s election show her enjoying a wide lead over the next candidate, the conservative entrepreneur Xóchitl Gálvez. She has an impressive résumé, with a PhD in environmental engineering and a term as Mexico City mayor. Still, after nearly a quarter-century in the public eye, she remains an enigma, known mainly as the low-key protégé of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the charismatic leader known as AMLO.

The question is whether a President Sheinbaum could step out of his shadow and govern a violence-racked country whose political institutions are in flux. The Morena party, founded by AMLO in 2014, has become the 800-pound gorilla of Mexican politics, controlling Congress and 23 of 32 governorships. While Sheinbaum is the presidential candidate, the party faithful maintain an intense loyalty to AMLO of the sort that Donald Trump’s base has for him.

“It’s clear to me she wants to be her own person. But we are in an unprecedented situation,” said political analyst Carlos Heredia, who advised AMLO when he was mayor of Mexico City. “Instead of power being centered in the Mexican state, it’s in one person.”

Sheinbaum is so closely tethered to AMLO that she sometimes adopts his slow, pause-filled style of speaking. Yet her profile is distinctly different. He frequently cites his Christian beliefs. She’s not religious; she rarely discusses her Jewish heritage. (Her grandparents migrated from Lithuania and Bulgaria to escape discrimination and Nazi persecution.) AMLO doesn’t speak English and dislikes traveling abroad. Sheinbaum did postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley; her sister and daughter live in the United States… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]

This fall will see elections for the following Council Districts 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor.

Declared candidates so far are:

Mayor

District 2

District 4

District 6

District 7 (Open seat)

District 10 (Open seat)

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