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BG Reads 8.14.2024

BG Reads 8.14.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - August 14, 2024

August 14, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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August 14, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 County commissioners approve tax rate election to raise $75M for child care (Austin Monitor)

🟣 Austin PD says it 'restricts' some evidence from DA, defense, possibly violating state law (Austin American-Statesman)

🟣 ABOR enacts new rules for Realtor compensation in wake of NAR settlement (Austin Business Journal)

🟣 The Austin Council meets today at 10AM to consider and adopt the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 proposed budget, along with proposed rate changes from several departments including Austin Energy and Austin Water.

Read On!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

🟣 [NEW] BG Blog: Austin Budget - Reviewing DSD, Austin Energy and Austin Water

🟣 [NEW] BG Podcast Ep. 264: Austin Politics Weekly Recap And What's Ahead

🟣 Updated City of Austin Org Chart (as of 7.2.2024)

LINK TO THIS WEEK’s CITY OF AUSTIN HEARINGS + AGENDA

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟣 [NEW] Council Meeting Schedule 8/14/2024

The Austin City Council convenes today at 10AM.
- Agenda here.
- View live here.

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

County commissioners approve tax rate election to raise $75M for child care (Austin Monitor)

The Travis County Commissioners Court voted Tuesday to place a tax rate increase on the November ballot that could generate $75 million per year to improve child care services throughout the area.

If approved, the money would be used to increase access to child care and after-school and summer programming activities, which have been found to be severely lacking in roughly a dozen child care “deserts” around Austin. Strategies developed by the Children’s Funding Project Work Group and Andy Roddick Foundation forecast the money would create nearly 1,900 new slots for infants and toddlers up to age 3 from low-income households, and nearly 3,900 new after-school and summer programming slots for school-age youth.

The funding would also increase the number and quality of providers for those services.

The unanimous approval will allow voters to decide on the proposed levy of 2.5 cents per $100 of taxable property value, which would increase the county’s total tax rate to $0.344445 cents per $100.

Commissioners began discussing the possible tax rate election in May with the passage of the CARES Resolution that initiated research into how child care options could be expanded and improved. With federal COVID relief funding winding down, county staff found there are only 3,000 state-funded slots available locally and a two-year waitlist containing 4,500 people… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin PD says it 'restricts' some evidence from DA, defense, possibly violating state law (Austin American-Statesman)

The Austin Police Department says it regularly "restricts" various pieces of evidence, such as body-worn camera footage, from the Travis County district attorney's office and defense lawyers — a possible violation of state law. The Police Department "does not believe it has violated any rules of evidence handling" laws, a spokesperson told the American-Statesman.

A joint statement from the department and the district attorney's office said police give "thorough access to all evidence" in cases and that changes to "business processes" and "technology" in recent months at their offices "led to complications related to the sharing of evidence" that both offices are working to address. The revelation came in a tense pretrial hearing Friday afternoon in Travis County's 460th Criminal District Court for a murder trial that was expected to begin Monday. In the hearing, state prosecutors said they had discovered that body-worn camera footage of officers who responded to the scene had not been released to them and therefore wasn't given to defense lawyers.

The evidence in question pertained to the body-worn camera footage of 21 officers who responded to a shooting that killed one person in downtown Austin on March 14, 2021. Police later arrested 25-year-old Adriean Benn and charged him with the murder of Jorian Donte Hardeway. Benn is represented by the Vazquez Law Firm, which maintains that he is innocent.

Travis County Criminal Court Judge Selena Alvarenga pushed the trial's start date to October in light of the development. Alvarenga suppressed the evidence from the state, meaning that prosecutors cannot use evidence from the 21 videos in their arguments. Alvarenga also ordered the Police Department to stand before the court Wednesday to answer why the evidence was withheld. "I want to hear from someone from APD about why evidence in a murder trial is restricted," Alvarenga said. "I want to know why any evidence is being restricted. Is that a policy?"

The Police Department acknowledged the restriction of evidence in a series of statements to the American-Statesman, the latter portion of which appeared to backtrack or downplay the department's initial response to the Statesman's questions. Contrary to what was said in court, the Police Department initially said the district attorney's office did have access to those videos, according to police spokesperson Anna Sabana's written response to emailed questions sent by the Statesman. However, Sabana said the department does restrict videos from prosecutors and defense lawyers, including these 21 videos… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

ABOR enacts new rules for Realtor compensation in wake of NAR settlement (Austin Business Journal)

Major changes in the way Realtors conduct business are coming across the nation soon, but the Austin Board of Realtors is getting a jumpstart and enacting the changes early.

Following a blockbuster $418 million settlement to end a wave of lawsuits earlier this year, the National Association of Realtors is rolling out new rules for Realtor compensation when buying or selling a home beginning Aug. 17, but ABOR is enacting those rules on Aug. 13. The goal is to support its members in the transition rather than enacting it over the coming weekend, ABOR and Unlock MLS CEO Emily Chenevert said.

The first change will impact how agents and buyers discuss compensation, according to an NAR announcement. Now, a compensation discussion must occur prior to a Realtor touring a property with a buyer, ensuring the two parties come to a written agreement… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Massive entertainment-oriented sporting goods chain to begin work soon (Austin Business Journal)

North Dakota-based sporting goods chain Scheels plans to start construction soon on its massive retail store and entertainment destination that is scheduled to open in Cedar Park in late 2026.

Company representatives confirmed information in an Aug. 7 filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation that construction work on the $110 million project will begin soon with completion earmarked for September 2026.

It's located at 750 E. New Hope Drive and is the second anchor tenant in a development that's being called CedarView.

The biggest store in CedarView will actually be the largest store in the Austin area — a 1.2 million-square-foot Nebraska Furniture Mart store that will be roughly the size of Lakeline Mall… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Welcome to Y’all Street, Texas’ burgeoning financial hub (Wall Street Journal)

Ross Perot Jr. gestured out the window as his helicopter circled a 4.5-acre pit alongside the skyline of downtown Dallas. Texas and U.S. flags hung from a crane within it. The site is where Perot’s real-estate investment company, Hillwood, is partnering to build a $500 million Goldman Sachs tower for more than 5,000 bankers and investors. That will make it the financial firm’s second-largest office, behind New York. As the helicopter swung northwest, windows glinted from two unfinished Wells Fargo office towers, scheduled to open next year. A bit farther away: a fourth office building under construction for Charles Schwab, which moved its headquarters from California to the Dallas area five years ago, and the footprint of a Deloitte campus doubling in size.

The sprawling landscape illustrates an expansion that has brought to North Texas a presence in financial services that now sits second only to New York City in the U.S. And growth of so-called Y’all Street is accelerating. “It’s stunning to watch,” said Perot, a Dallas native and son of the former presidential candidate, of the phenomenon other investors termed a finance invasion. “You’re really seeing a whole new North Texas ecosystem.”

New York’s foothold on finance still dwarfs that of North Texas. But greater Dallas has largely shed its reputation as a financial backwater, memorialized in Michael Lewis’s 1989 book, “Liar’s Poker,” as a purgatory Salomon Brothers traders in New York feared being shipped off to. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Texas investment-banking and securities employment has increased 111% over the past 20 years and 27% since the pandemic, compared with 16% and 5%, respectively, in New York.

The number of people employed in finance overall has risen 13% in Texas since 2019, compared with 2% in New York and 3% nationally. Dallas now ranks second to New York City among metro areas in the number of workers employed in finance-related industries. Other cities, particularly in the Sunbelt, have seen growth as those services increasingly seek to be closer to customers nationwide. Florida has seen a nearly 15% increase in the number of people employed in finance since 2019, according to the bureau’s data.

The Charlotte, N.C., metro area, home to Bank of America, now has more than 8% of its workforce employed in finance, compared with 6.9% in Phoenix, 6.8% in Dallas and 6.5% in New York. Ray Perryman, president of the Perryman Group, an economic research and analysis firm, said Texas has outpaced New York for several years in banking employment and is rapidly gaining in investment employment. Other major cities such as Chicago have seen minimal growth, he said. “Wall Street remains the center of the investment universe, but Y’all Street is gaining rapidly,” Perryman said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is the Democrats’ pick for Jackson Lee seat in Congress (Texas Tribune)

Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is on a glide path to be the next congressman from Houston, after Harris County Democrats selected him Tuesday to be the Democratic candidate for the seat vacated by the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

A committee of 88 party officials in the 18th district were invited to vote at a Tuesday night meeting for the next Democratic candidate. Turner won by a slim margin, securing 41 votes. Former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards came in second with 37. The district is heavily Democratic, and Turner is favored to win the general election in November.

The Harris Democratic Party selected the candidate because Jackson Lee died too close to the general election to hold another primary. Jackson Lee died last month amid a battle with pancreatic cancer. She had won the Democratic primary for the seat in March against Edwards… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Judge temporarily blocks Texas Education Agency from releasing A-F accountability ratings again (Texas Public Radio)

For the second year in a row, Texas school districts asked the courts to intervene over the state’s methods of grading their academic performances.

And, also for a second year in a row, a judge blocked Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath from releasing those grades, known as A-F accountability ratings.

As of Monday, Aug. 12, the order barring the release of A-F ratings is temporary, preventing TEA from releasing the ratings this week as planned. TEA was slated to release official ratings to districts on Tuesday and to the public on Thursday.

Five Texas school districts filed suit in a Travis County District Court on Monday, asking for a hold on releasing the A-F ratings. Judge Karin Crump granted their request, issued a temporary restraining order barring the release until a hearing scheduled for Aug. 26… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it (Associated Press)

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly… (LINK TO FULL STORY)