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August 24, 2023

In today's BG Reads:

Leading News

➡️  Recapping the City Budget Battles  

➡️  Major Layoffs at Texas Tribune

➡️  Takeaways from the 2024 GOP presidential debate

Bingham Group Content

🎙️  BG Podcast Ep. 212 (Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)

👔 NEW - Bingham Group‘s policy and government affairs job board

🗒️  BG Blog: Tracking City of Austin Leadership Changes

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Here's How Austin's Last-Minute City Budget Battles Played Out (Austin Chronicle)

By the morning of Aug. 16, the day City Council was set to approve a budget for fiscal year 2023-24, much of the $5.5 billion spending plan had been cemented.

About $1.4 billion would be allocated to the General Fund, which pays for city services like police, fire, Emergency Medical Services, parks, libraries, and housing assistance. GF expenditures are largely outlined by city management following a months-long budget writing process that begins in February.

For this year, the GF includes budget line items proposed by Interim City Manager Jesús Garza, such as: $80.9 million to respond to homelessness, $6.1 million to buy generators for city facilities used as shelters during extreme weather events, and $4 million devoted to improving the city's permit review and Land Development Code amendment processes… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

And in other Austin Metro News:

➡️ Audit finds police department backlog of 20,000 public information requests (Austin Monitor) -> FULL STORY HERE 

➡️ Here's How Austin's Last-Minute City Budget Battles Played Out (Austin Chronicle) -> FULL STORY HERE 

➡️ Site plan appeal reveals city tech failings at ZAP (Austin Monitor) ->  FULL STORY HERE

➡️ Watson Wire: Getting Out of Our Own Way (Mayor Kirk Watson) -> FULL STORY HERE

Also:

🚁 Not ours: Why did a private helicopter land multiple times in a north Austin parking lot? -> FULL STORY HERE

🚔 From Quorum Report’s Rumor mill: Former APD and Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo is said to be considering a run for Travis County Sheriff -> MORE ON TWITTER (X?) HERE 

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas Tribune Lays Off Journalists and Entire Copy Desk (Austin Chronicle)

Another legacy newsroom has joined the alarming industry-wide trend of mass layoffs.

Wednesday, Texas Tribune Senior Editor David Pasztor tweeted a picture of Tribune colleagues Alexa Ura and Jolie McCullough, saying, “two of the greatest journalists I’ve ever had the privilege of working with.

We were all laid off today as @TexasTribune attempts to reverse financial and leadership tailspin.” The layoffs also include Multimedia Producer Justin Dehn, Senior Video and Multimedia Editor Todd Wiseman, Copy Chief Emily Goldstein, and the entire copy desk.

According to a note CEO Sonal Shah sent to employees this afternoon, the layoffs are an attempt to refocus investment on boosting “new formats,” “new tools,” and “connect[ing] to new communities.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

OTHER TEXAS NEWS:

➡️  Federal judge rejects Texas’ migrant ‘invasion’ defense in DOJ lawsuit over border buoys (Dallas Morning) -> FULL STORY HERE

 ➡️ More than 100 school chaplains oppose new law allowing them to serve as counselors (KERA) ->  FULL STORY HERE 

➡️  To attend Ken Paxton’s Senate impeachment trial, you’ll need a ticket (Community Impact) -> FULL STORY HERE

[NATIONAL NEWS]

5 takeaways from the first Republican primary debate (NPR)

Imagine a world in which Donald Trump decided not to run again for reelection.

That's what the audience experienced for about the first 50 minutes of the first Republican presidential primary debate. There had been only fleeting, subtle swipes at Trump in that time. A debate instead broke out on the economy, abortion, crime and, in theory but not really, on climate change.

And you would have thought some guy named Vivek Ramaswamy was the frontrunner for the nomination. But then the viewing audience was reminded of reality when moderator Bret Baier of Fox News Channel noted the next segment was going to be about "the elephant not in the room" – to the dismay of the Trump-adoring, and loudly booing, audience… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

OTHER NEWS:

➡️ ‘Treacherous’ descent: Fed debates how far to push rate hikes (Politico) -> LINK TO FULL STORY)

 ➡️ Maui's number of people not accounted for after fires rises back above 1,000 (NPR) -> LINK TO FULL STORY 

 ➡️ The City Where People Aren’t Going Back to Offices (Wall Street Journal) -> LINK TO FULL STORY 

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