BG Reads 6.25.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - June 25, 2024

June 25, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

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June 25, 2024

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Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Broadnax sees police oversight as ‘natural’ component of next contract (Austin Monitor)

🟣 Austin has a high rate of segregation between homeowners and renters, study finds (KUT)

🟣 As more Texans struggle with housing costs, homeownership becoming less attainable (Texas Tribune)

🟣 Biden and Trump will debate on Thursday. Here’s what you need to know (NPR)

Read On!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

Highlights include:

🟣 Austin Police Chief candidates listed (6.18.2024) -> www.binghamgp.com/blog/ausitnpolicechiefcandidates

🟣 City Manager TC Broadnax's comments on the search (6.24.2024) -> www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2024/0…-police-chief/

If there’s a matter of particular interest and/or concern, we’re happy to discuss. Email me at: [email protected]

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Broadnax sees police oversight as ‘natural’ component of next contract (Austin Monitor)

The Austin Monitor recently sat down with new Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax to discuss some of the more prominent issues facing city staff and City Council as he gets situated in his job.

Regarding the police contract, the draft agreement proposal was floating out there prior to your predecessor’s departure. Did you have any thoughts strongly one way or the other about what was contained in that?… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin has a high rate of segregation between homeowners and renters, study finds (KUT)

Renters and homeowners in the Austin metro live more sequestered from each other than in other U.S. cities, according to a study from Harvard University released last week.

The Austin area has one of the highest levels of renter and homeowner segregation, researchers with Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found after analyzing U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

One of the reasons for this is a high percentage of what researchers call “rental deserts,” or neighborhoods where fewer than one in five homes are rented or available for rent. A third of neighborhoods in the Austin metro are "rental deserts," according to researchers’ analysis of data. Researchers found it was most common to find few rented homes in urban neighborhoods west of MoPac and in the suburbs surrounding the city… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin Community College fall enrollment up 23% from last year across all campuses (Community Impact)

Fall enrollment across the Austin Community College District is up nearly 23% from last fall, according to ACC officials in a June 21 news release.Officials said the community college district, which has 11 campuses around the Austin metro, has seen a surge in fall enrollment growth just one month after registration opened May 13.

Every campus has seen an increase in enrollment, said Sydney Pruitt, ACC’s senior media relations coordinator. According to the ACC, the Highland Campus has the highest total number of students enrolled, up 28.4% from last year, followed by Round Rock Campus, which has increased 29.9%… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Commission on Presidential Debates officially cancels forum at Texas State University (Austin American-Statesman)

Weeks after President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump publicly criticized the Commission on Presidential Debates, opting instead to participate in media-produced forums, the organization officially canceled its planned debates for the general election, including one at Texas State University.

The university was set to be the first in Texas to host a presidential debate and planned to spend $5 million to make the event possible.

“Given the letter dated May 15, 2024 from Jen O’Malley Dillon, Campaign Chair for the Biden-Harris Campaign, in which the Biden-Harris Campaign informed the Commission that President Biden will not agree to debate under the sponsorship of the Commission during the 2024 general election campaign, it is unfair to ask the four campuses to continue to prepare for their debates, as they have been doing since their November, 2023 selection," commission co-chairs Antonia Hernández and Frank Fahrenkopf said in a statement… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

As more Texans struggle with housing costs, homeownership becoming less attainable (Texas Tribune)

More Texas homeowners and renters than ever are struggling with high housing costs — and the state’s high home prices have potentially put the dream of owning a home out-of-reach for a growing number of families.

That’s according to a new report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, which also found that home prices and rents remain well above where they stood before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Texas housing market has cooled amid high interest rates after steep increases brought on by the state’s recent red-hot economic growth. So would-be homebuyers now need to make more money than ever before in order to buy a home in Texas’ major urban areas. The number of Texas homeowners and renters who struggle to keep a roof over their head also now sits at an all-time high.

“The costs of buying a home have left homeownership out of reach to all but the most advantaged households,” said Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the center… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Half of Texans don't think the power grid will hold up this summer: Poll (CBS News)

Over half of Texans say they don't have a lot of confidence in the power grid, according to a new poll.

The Texas Politics Project at UT Austin asked Texans: How likely do you think it is that there will be a widespread failure of the electric grid this summer?

The poll, conducted this month, found that 34% of Texans think it's somewhat likely that the power grid will fail this summer. 

Meanwhile, 17% said it was very likely that the power grid would fail this summer. Together, that's more than half of Texans who say they don't have faith in the grid. 

Although over half are doubtful, 29% said it was not too likely that the grid would fail this summer, 9% said it's not at all likely and 10% said they didn't know or had no opinion...  (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas DPS fighting Uvalde victims’ families in court to keep school shooting evidence a state secret (WFAA)

Despite early pledges from Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw to publicly release evidence from the Uvalde massacre, his legal team has quietly worked for more than a year to keep it a state secret. “I haven’t seen so many tentacles of delay which is what we’ve seen in every aspect of these cases,” said Laura Lee Prather, an attorney from Haynes Boone, in this week’s episode of Y’all-itics. She represents 18 local and national news outlets – from CNN to Sinclair – that have sued to get the public records in the case. TEGNA, the parent company of WFAA, is a party to that lawsuit.

“Let me give you a flavor of what hasn’t come out. No videos. No dashcams. No 911 calls. No autopsy reports. No ballistic reports. No toxicology reports. No witness interviews. No use of force reports, and the list goes on, and on, and on,” Prather explained. The catastrophic failures of law enforcement that day have already been well established.

More than 300 armed officers rushed to the scene. But they hesitated for more than 90 minutes – refusing to confront the teenage shooter after he slaughtered 19 fourth graders and two teachers in their own classroom. For more than two years now, families of the 21 victims have sought accountability and closure – hoping the evidence will reveal why local, state and federal officers were so hesitant to engage the mass shooter. “Oh, I think what we’re going to end up seeing is a number of different ways in which we can get better,” Prather explained.

“We already know that the majority of these officers had active shooter training but not enough of it. We’ve already been able to establish that the students in that classroom had more training for shooters coming on campus than the officers who responded which is staggering – just staggering.” In court, Texas DPS insists that the records cannot be made public because it remains an open investigation.

But Texas law enforcement agencies use discretion every day to publicly release evidence in open cases. Plus, in the Uvalde situation, the shooter is dead. DPS Director Steve McCraw even admitted the physical evidence is not changing. In September 2022, months after the massacre, McCraw told Austin’s KVUE-TV that he wanted the records made public. “The more evidence that comes out – and I look forward to releasing all of the evidence – and particularly the video and audio evidence because the public is in the best position to look at it and determine for themselves, but I can’t change it. I can’t change the facts. It may be unseemly to some but in the end, it’s the truth,” McCraw said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Biden and Trump will debate on Thursday. Here’s what you need to know (NPR)

President Biden and former President Donald Trump will face off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 general election on Thursday night in Atlanta.

It begins a new phase of the presidential race, less than five months out from Nov. 5, Election Day, as the matchup remains extremely tight. Biden and Trump stand virtually tied, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, which echoes a months-long trend of recent national surveys.

The debate also breaks with campaign tradition, occurring months earlier than usual and with a new set of rules both candidates have agreed to, including no live audience. It’s also the first debate either candidate has participated in this campaign season. Biden largely ran unopposed, and Trump notably skipped the GOP primary debates… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

How California’s $100 billion surplus became a ‘budget emergency’ (Washington Post)

Two years ago, California was so flush that Gov. Gavin Newsom was moved to make a bold declaration about the state’s estimated $100 billion budget surplus.

“Simply without precedent,” the Democratic leader said, announcing the good news in May 2022. “No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this.” In those heady days, the state’s record-setting surfeit of cash seemed like a resounding endorsement of the California way, bolstering Newsom’s rising national profile and presidential bona fides. But fast-forward to 2024 and the situation has swung wildly in the opposite direction: The state — still the wealthiest and most populous in the nation — is facing a nearly $50 billion budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year, testing its commitment to an increasingly liberal agenda advanced in recent years.

The crunch is forcing Newsom, seen as a top 2028 presidential candidate, to declare a statewide fiscal emergency, dip into rainy-day reserves and make painful cuts that could put him at odds with staunch allies and temper the ambition of his most sweeping policy goals as he seeks to address pressing problems like homelessness and affordability. It’s too soon to tell how the budget crisis will affect Newsom’s standing beyond California, but in a state poll early this year, just 46 percent of voters approved of his performance, while half of the electorate said the deficit was “extremely serious.”

With his second and final term ending after 2026, this year’s budget cycle presented Newsom a key chance to bolster his record before a possible White House bid. In announcing their weekend agreement to balance the state’s books and pass a nearly $300 billion budget, Newsom and his fellow Democratic leaders sought to frame the compromise as a fiscally responsible approach that preserves many popular social programs and includes safeguards in case of future financial troubles.

“This agreement sets the state on a path for long-term fiscal stability — addressing the current shortfall and strengthening budget resilience down the road,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday. Critics, however, say the budget wounds were self-inflicted, blaming the deficit on Democrats’ mismanagement and predicting that their agenda will hurt not only the state’s finances but Newsom’s chances on the national stage… (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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