BG Reads 7.2.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - July 2, 2024

July 02, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

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July 2, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 APD staffing shortage continues with over 330 sworn officer vacancies (KXAN)

🟣 Austin could hit 100's for 6 days straight this week (Austin American-Statesman)

🟣 Former aide to Austin Mayor Adler sentenced for conspiracy to misapply federal funds (Austin American-Statesman)

🟣 Here’s what the Supreme Court’s Chevron ruling could mean in everyday terms (New York Times)

🟣 Supreme Court says Trump has absolute immunity for core acts only (NPR)

Read On!

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[CITY OF AUSTIN]

âś… Council Message Board RE Climate Bond Initiative (6.28.2024) - Comments from Mayor Kirk Watson and Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool

âś… Council Message Board RE Environmental Bond 2024 (7.1.2024) - Comments from Council Members Ryan Alter (District 5) and Vanessa Fuentes (District 2)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Austin could hit 100's for 6 days straight this week (Austin American-Statesman)

Shortly after Austin's first 100 degree day of the year on Thursday, the city could see nearly a week straight of triple digits.

Highs reached 100 again on Sunday and Monday, according to data from the National Weather Service. Now the service is forecasting four more days of 100-plus temperatures through Friday.

From this year's first triple digits to the last time Austin saw 100-degree temperatures on Sept 24, 2023, 277 days passed, according to data from the National Weather Service.

The service's Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a hotter than average summer for Central Texas this season. Higher overall temperatures are a function of global warming trends due to climate change… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Will Austin really be the next single-staircase city? (Austin Monitor)

City staff is pushing back on a proposal to allow single stairways for multifamily buildings.

City Council unanimously approved a resolution to amend the code and allow multifamily projects up to six stories to have a single staircase in May. The change is intended to support the development of smaller-scale complexes with family-sized apartments and has been adopted by cities like Seattle and New York City in an attempt to facilitate such building types.

However, a June 26 memo from Development Services Director JosĂ© Roig, Austin Fire Chief Joel Baker and EMS Chief Robert Luckritz recommends the city maintain its current standards as set by the International Building Code.

The memo says that technical code and first responder experts “reviewed Austin’s single stairway amendment and found significant potential safety risks to occupants and first responders were we to amend the Code.”

The city’s Planning Commission is slated to discuss the potential code change at its July 9 meeting… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Parks Board hears from the public on the next (and former) PARD director (Austin Monitor)

The Parks and Recreation Board got an earful of public testimony earlier this month regarding the city’s national search to replace former parks director Kimberly McNeeley.

McNeeley recently left the Parks and Recreation Department after accepting the position of CEO of the Trail Conservancy, one of the department’s nonprofit partners.

Several speakers, including some department employees, aired their grievances about McNeeley’s tenure as examples of what they don’t want to see in the next leader.

Because staff from the city’s ATXN public access channel were unavailable to record the June 17 special meeting, the sound quality from the meeting room was touch-and-go, adding a layer of difficulty to accurately identifying each speaker and their comments.

However, much of the testimony – from both parks department employees and residents – was critical of the department’s deepening relationship with its nonprofit partners, which receive city funding for projects without guardrails in place to ensure transparency. In May, Rewild ATX, a group of volunteers focused on biodiversity in city parks and climate mitigation and which actively opposed the Zilker Park Vision Plan, asked the city to perform an audit of the nonprofits… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Sustainable East Austin community Whisper Valley gains new international homebuilder (Austin Business Journal)

The latest homebuilder to get involved in East Austin’s Whisper Valley neighborhood — a Central Texas epicenter for innovation in sustainable housing — is pushing the limits of how quickly a home can be built.

Kosovo-based InstaBuilt LLC will build its first U.S. homes in Whisper Valley and also is establishing its North American headquarters in East Austin, according to a July 1 announcement.

The company's homes, which will take advantage of Whisper Valley’s geothermal and solar capabilities, are manufactured off-site and then assembled on-site in eight to 12 hours. Because of the technologies it uses, it's able to construct in an energy-efficient manner at a lower price than the average in Austin, InstaBuilt CEO Mentor Pllana said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Former aide to Austin Mayor Adler sentenced for conspiracy to misapply federal funds (Austin American-Statesman)

An ex-aide for former Austin Mayor Steve Adler has been sentenced in federal court for taking payments from a nonprofit he had co-founded that won a federal contract he advocated for while working in the mayor's office, according to a Monday news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Frank Rodriguez, 73, was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $21,375 in restitution for "conspiring to misapply federal funds and to falsify records in an investigation within the jurisdiction of an agency of the United States," the news release from the DOJ states.

The sentencing comes more than six years after the American-Statesman published a months-long investigation showing that the nonprofit Latino HealthCare Forum, which Rodriguez co-founded and ran before he joined the mayor's office, reaped $1 million in public money for programs he helped create while leading the city's Hispanic/Latino Quality of Life Resource Advisory Commission. City commissions make spending and budget recommendations to the Austin City Council... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

APD staffing shortage continues with over 330 sworn officer vacancies (KXAN)

The Austin Police Department has about 330 vacant sworn officer positions, according to the department.

This is slightly down since APD’s second quarter report, which had 342 sworn officer vacancies.

During a Public Safety Commission meeting Monday, APD Chief of Staff Jeff Greenwalt said staffing troubles continue in the department. APD has 463 vacancies among sworn, civilian and emergency communications-civilian positions, according to the third quarter report.

The downtown area command had the highest staffing rate among all command areas in APD’s jurisdiction with about 80% staffing, as of a June 24 update… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe may join crowded District 7 candidate field (Austin Monitor)

With City Council Member Leslie Pool retiring, five candidates are lined up for the District 7 seat. However, a sixth candidate may be jumping into the race very soon. Attorney Gary Bledsoe, aptly described by The Austin Bulldog as “a towering figure in civil rights,” confirmed Thursday that he is strongly considering the race.

If Bledsoe does decide to run, he will be joining Mike Siegel, Todd Shaw, Adam Powell, Pierre Nguyen and Edwin Bautista, who have already declared their candidacies. Bledsoe has served as president of the Texas NAACP since 1991 and has worked as an attorney on a number of important cases.

The Texas Rangers appointed their first Black Ranger in 1988 after Bledsoe threatened to sue the agency for discrimination. If Bledsoe were elected to the District 7 seat, Council would have two Black members for the first time in its history. Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison, the only Black member of Council, represents District 1… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Note: Candidate Adam Powell is also Black.

[TEXAS NEWS]

Rio Grande Valley leaders hope to rebrand region as “RioPlex” to attract investment (Texas Tribune)

Hoping to attract more investment into the region, elected officials and business leaders in the Rio Grande Valley are teaming up with their Mexican counterparts to try to rebrand the area under a unified name: the RioPlex.

Hidalgo County officials announced the marketing strategy last month, aiming to highlight the region's assets: four seaports, seven airports, 13 international bridges, more than 100,000 university students and approximately 2.8 to 3.5 million residents in the Valley and northern Tamaulipas.

"We wanted to make sure that we identified ourselves in such a way that we could compete with anybody else in the world," said Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez.

The effort came from the Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force, an initiative launched last year to reduce the county's poverty rate by training and educating the workforce for "living wage" jobs. The task force includes a CEO group that gathered for a brainstorming session on how to make the region more attractive to outside investors... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Abbott, Patrick want to double taxpayer-backed fund financing new natural gas power plants (Houston Chronicle)

Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick said Monday they would seek to expand a taxpayer-backed program primarily funding low-interest loans to build natural gas power plants in Texas to $10 billion from $5 billion “as soon as possible.”

The move comes in response to new estimates from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s power grid operator, that the state could need 152 gigawatts of power in six years, roughly doubling the current record of 85.5 gigawatts. Though the projection has been public since April, there has been fresh concern among state leaders – including a sharp turn by some against the cryptocurrency industry – after ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas spooked lawmakers last month with his testimony at legislative hearings on the grid in June.

“If the new estimate is correct, the updated numbers provided by Mr. Vegas call for an immediate review of all policies concerning the grid,” Abbott and Patrick said in a joint statement. Voters in November approved a $10 billion package known as the Texas Energy Fund meant to incentivize new on-demand generation – excluding battery storage – on the ERCOT grid, with $5 billion available in 2024 and 2025. Developers have submitted 125 notices of their intention to apply for $38.9 billion in financing for nearly 56 gigawatts of proposed generation, though not all may formally apply by the July 27 deadline.

How much of the 152 gigawatts of projected demand will materialize is also uncertain, as some applications to connect to the ERCOT grid, such as from data centers, may be speculative. Critics of the Texas Energy Fund have said state leaders should focus on programs that reduce energy waste and incentivize energy conservation during times of peak demand, rather than gas plants that produce climate-warming emissions… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Supreme Court says Trump has absolute immunity for core acts only (NPR)

In a historic, consequential, and controversial decision on Monday, the Supreme Court granted substantial immunity from prosecution to former president Donald Trump on election subversion charges.

The decision almost certainly will delay his trial until after the November election, if it takes place at all. The vote was 6-to-3, with the court’s Republican appointees all in the majority, and the Democratic appointees in fierce dissent. The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, established a broad new immunity from prosecution, not just for Trump, but for past and future presidents, too.

Presidents may not be prosecuted for exercising their “core” constitutional powers, and even in situations where former presidents might be prosecuted after leaving office, they are entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for official actions they took as president. Such immunity is needed, said the chief justice, in order to protect an “energetic,” and “independent executive,” willing to take “bold” actions and make unpopular decisions when needed.

And while Roberts said that private actions by a former president are not protected from prosecution, his opinion seemed to inexorably intertwine private and public actions.

The court, however, did not itself resolve whether any of the election subversion charges against Trump could go forward; rather, the justices sent the case back to the trial court judge to determine whether any of the charges against Trump are sufficiently private to survive—in other words, not within his official purview as president. And it made it far more difficult to prosecute a former president by limiting the evidence a prosecutor could present. In a brief statement to reporters on Monday, President Biden said that today’s Supreme Court decision undermines the rule of law and sets a “dangerous” precedent.

“Today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what the president can do,” Biden said. “The power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.” Stuart Gerson, a Republican who served in high-level Justice Department positions, put the effect of Monday’s ruling this way: “It is impossible that this case will be resolved, if ever, before the election.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Here’s what the Supreme Court’s Chevron ruling could mean in everyday terms (New York Times)

The decision effectively ends a legal precedent known as “Chevron deference,” after a 1984 Supreme Court ruling. That decision held that when Congress passes a law that lacks specificity, courts must give wide leeway to decisions made by the federal agencies charged with implementing that law. The theory was that scientists, economists and other specialists at the agencies have more expertise than judges in determining regulations and that the executive branch is also more accountable to voters.

Since then, thousands of legal decisions have relied on the Chevron doctrine when challenges have been made to regulations stemming from laws like the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 2010 Affordable Care Act and others.

In writing laws, Congress has frequently used open-ended directives, such as “ensuring the rule is in the public interest,” leaving it to agency experts to write rules to limit toxic smog, ensure that health plans cover basic medical services, ensure the safety of drugs and cosmetics and protect consumers from risky corporate financial behavior.

But that gave too much power to unelected government officials, according to conservatives, who ran a coordinated, multiyear campaign to end the Chevron doctrine. They believe the courts, not administrative agencies, should have the power to interpret statutes. The effort was led by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to large corporations, and supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.

“Overturning Chevron was a shared goal of the conservative movement and the Trump administration. It was expressed constantly,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who served as chief of staff at the E.P.A. under President Trump and has helped write Project 2025, a policy blueprint for a next Republican administration.

“It creates a massive opportunity for these regulations to be challenged. And it could galvanize additional momentum toward reining in the administrative state writ large if the administration changes in November.”… (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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