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- BG Reads 8.26.2024
BG Reads 8.26.2024
🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - August 26, 2024
Bingham Group Reads
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www.binghamgp.com
August 26, 2024
Today's BG Reads include:
🟣 Two Austin City Council members amass tens of thousands years out from their 2026 election (Austin American-Statesman)
🟣 Rally Austin pushes for city action on four sites ID’d for redevelopment (Austin Monitor)
🟣 Central Health sends 2025 fiscal year budget to Travis County for final approval (KUT)
🟣 The Week Ahead in Public Hearings
Read On!
[BINGHAM GROUP]
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🟣 Council Message Board - Council Work Session 8/27/24
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Rally Austin pushes for city action on four sites ID’d for redevelopment (Austin Monitor)
Representatives of the economic entity created by City Council to speed up development of city real estate assets in support of affordable housing said they’re being stymied by inaction that’s holding back work on at least four high-profile sites.
In 2022, City Council approved four properties to consider for redevelopment in the near future, with Rally Austin – the former Austin Economic Development Corporation – put in charge of those projects. The four properties are One Texas Center at 505 Barton Springs Road, the former city municipal building at 124 W. Eighth St., and properties at 3002 Guadalupe St. and 411 Chicon St.
In an interview with the Austin Monitor, Rally Austin representatives said that the organization is waiting for the city to turn over control of the properties even as it moves forward with work to preserve creative spaces… ✅ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Two Austin City Council members amass tens of thousands years out from their 2026 election (Austin American-Statesman)
Well over two years out from their next election, Austin City Council Members Ryan Alter and Zohaib "Zo" Qadri have amassed tens of thousands of dollars for their reelection campaigns, a move that only recently has become legal under city code.
For years, Austin had a "blackout period" on campaign fundraising for local elections, meaning candidates for the City Council or mayor could accept campaign donations for a limited window of time. Most recently, donations were allowed within a year of election day, only a quarter of the typical council member's four-year term.
Such laws are among many regarding both the timing and amount of money candidates and officeholders can accept broadly put in place to deter the influence of cash on legislative agendas and the appearance of corruption. Members of the Texas Legislature, for example, cannot accept contributions during the legislative session.
But after a federal judge for a second time in the last decade ruled that Austin's existing blackout period was unconstitutional, the City Council repealed the section of the ordinance that outlined time constraints. This makes Austin's governing body more analogous to Congress, which also meets routinely throughout the year and whose members raise money for their campaigns seemingly nonstop.
Qadri reported raising more money in the latest financial reporting period, Jan. 1 through June 30, than all did but one of the mayoral candidates who will be on the ballot this November, raking in just over $130,000 and maintaining about $121,500 cash on hand. If he continues at that pace, Qadri could be positioned with a massive war chest heading into his 2026 election… ✅ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Central Health sends 2025 fiscal year budget to Travis County for final approval (KUT)
Central Health leadership gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a $884 million budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The budget will go before Travis County commissioners for a final vote in September.
As Travis County’s public hospital district, Central Health is tasked with funding health care for low-income and indigent residents, primarily through tax revenue. The organization’s board of managers voted on a new tax rate of 10.7969 cents per $100 of valuation at their Wednesday meeting. That would increase the average local homeowner’s tax bill by $66.
Central Health plans to spend more than $353 million on health care services this year, including a record $60 million on services offered directly by Central Health at its clinics and other sites… ✅ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw retiring after 15 years as state’s top law enforcement officer (Texas Tribune)
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw announced Friday he will retire at the end of the year, marking an end to a 15-year tenure defined in recent years by his agency’s flawed response to the Uvalde school shooting and its role in the state’s border crackdown, Operation Lone Star.
McCraw broke the news while delivering a commencement address at a DPS trooper graduation ceremony.
“It’s rather an easy thing to do, because I know Gov. Greg Abbott will ensure that my replacement is as good and likely better than I am at this particular job,” McCraw said.
Speaking at the event, Abbott called McCraw “one of the most highly regarded law enforcement officers in the United States of America” and said his “flexibility to meet the changing needs of law enforcement has truly revolutionized the Texas Department of Public Safety.”… ✅ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Discount city-to-city bus service company Megabus ceases operations in Texas (Dallas Business Journal)
The wheels on the Megabus will no longer go round and round in Texas.
Earlier this month, the discount city-to-city bus service -- famous for offering fares as low as $1 -- announced that its routes between Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston were to be discontinued as of August 16.
Simultaneously, the company announced that it was also discontinuing as August 16 its bus routes between Atlanta; Charlotte; Durham, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and Washington, D.C.
At the same time, Megabus also revealed that it was turning over a number of its intercity route operations in the Northeast to partner transit providers Peter Pan Bus Lines and Fullington Trailways… ✅ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
UT System prohibits its universities from making political or social statements (Texas Tribune)
The University of Texas Board of Regents amended its free speech policy this week to prohibit the system and its 14 universities and health-related institutions from adopting political or social positions unrelated to campus operations.
“Institutions should not, in their official capacity, issue or express positions on issues of the day, however appealing they may be to some members of the university community,” reads the new language that was added to the system’s statement on freedom of speech and expression and approved by the board during its Thursday meeting.
The policy does not apply to individual faculty, staff or students free speech and only relates to “official university statements, functions, ceremonies, and publications.”… ✅ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
There’s a severe kidney shortage. Should donors be compensated? (NPR)
More than 90,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for a kidney transplant. But an ongoing kidney shortage means a thousand people a month are removed from the waitlist, either because they die while waiting for a kidney or become too sick for a transplant.
Elaine Perlman wants to change that.
“Enough is enough,” she says, “The kidney shortage is a solvable problem.”
Perlman is executive director of Waitlist Zero , a coalition supporting newly proposed federal legislation that would create a 10-year-pilot program called the End Kidney Deaths Act.
The bill, with sponsors from both parties, would offer a refundable tax credit of $50,000, spread evenly over five years, to people who donate one of their kidneys to an anonymous recipient on the national kidney waitlist.
“We are trying to save tens of thousands of lives as well as billions of tax dollars,” says Perlman.
Medicare spends more than $50 billion a year on dialysis. Transplants save lives and money over the long term and improve patient outcomes. That’s especially true for transplants done with living donor kidneys, which can last up to 20 years - about twice as long as those from deceased donors… ✅ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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