BG Reads 8.28.2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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August 28, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Class action lawsuit targets Austin taxes over Project Connect (KUT)

🟪 Council to consider changes in decibel limits for some new construction (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Texas must build hundreds of thousands of homes to lower housing costs, says state comptroller (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Why Philadelphia is bucking a nationwide surge in evictions (Wall Street Journal)

🟪 Democrats and Republicans greet Covid spike with a collective shrug (Politico)

Read On!

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

[BINGHAM GROUP]

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

We are proud to represent and have represented a wide range of clients in the Austin Metro and Texas Capitol at the intersection of government and business.

Learn more about Bingham Group’s experience here, and review client testimonials here.

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟪 Review the Ballot Applications for the November 2024 Election

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Class action lawsuit targets Austin taxes over Project Connect (KUT)

A new class-action lawsuit is seeking to block the city from collecting any property taxes, potentially starving Austin's municipal government of almost all revenue, until it kills a tax approved by voters in 2020 to fund the largest public transit expansion in Central Texas history.

The lawsuit is being brought by some of the same taxpayers who filed an earlier challenge to the transit plan known as Project Connect. The previous suit — targeting the funding mechanism for borrowing billions to build a light-rail starter system — is now frozen while the state's Third Court of Appeals considers arguments.

The new suit was filed late Monday in the 126th Travis County District Court. It claims the city's property tax rate was miscalculated because it includes the Project Connect tax, which is generating revenue for transit projects including a light-rail plan whose initial scope reduced from 20.2 miles to 9.8-miles… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Council to consider changes in decibel limits for some new construction (Austin Monitor)

At Thursday’s meeting, City Council will consider adjustments to the recent DB90 zoning classification that could result in a significant reduction in the noise levels allowed in residential areas.

A scheduled public hearing on the possible ordinance change could also result in adoption of one of two ordinances that take opposite positions on the noise limits. One version supported by the Planning Commission seeks a reduction to 45 decibels as measured at a neighbor’s property line or alleyway, while a staff-supported version leaves in place the current 70-decibel limit.

At issue is the noise created by cooling units and other heavy machinery needed for dense commercial or residential buildings, with the several-ton units that are placed on rooftops running at high volumes that bleed into neighboring properties if not properly screened and soundproofed… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas Gas Service rate hearing at Council this Thursday (Austin Monitor)

City Council will host a hearing on Thursday to allow members of the public, particularly customers of Texas Gas Service, to voice their opinions about a large rate increase the utility is proposing.

The city has also joined a coalition of cities seeking to convince the Texas Railroad Commission, which makes the final decision about gas rates, to lower the increase that TGS seeks.

Consumer advocate Paul Robbins plans to be on hand for the item, which is on Thursday’s City Council agenda. He has prepared a lengthy explanation of the utility’s proposed rates and compared them with rates charged by CPS Energy in San Antonio.

According to Robbins, if Texas Gas Service “gets its proposed rate increase, its residential rates per customer will have risen 105 percent in six years. Inflation between 2019 and 2024 was 23 percent.”

He noted that CPS Energy in San Antonio has had a net rate increase of 7 percent since 2014. Over the 10 years between 2014 and 2024, inflation was 33 percent when the new 2024 rate went into effect, he said… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

CapMetro swears in top officials of new police force (KUT)

Capital Metro took a major step toward establishing its own police force Monday, swearing in the transit agency's first-ever police chief, Eric Robins, and his two top deputies. They'll be responsible for hiring officers and training them to patrol buses and trains starting summer 2025.

"The decision to build a transit police department wasn't taken lightly," Capital Metro CEO Dottie Watkins said before the swearing-in ceremony at the agency's headquarters on East Fifth Street. "I think we might have studied it for somewhere close to 20 years before we finally did it."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas must build hundreds of thousands of homes to lower housing costs, says state comptroller (Texas Tribune)

If Texas wants to rein in its high housing costs, it needs more homes, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s office said Tuesday — the latest sign that the state’s high home prices and rents have become a growing concern for the state’s top officials.

Homebuilding in Texas didn’t keep up as the economy boomed and millions of new residents moved here over the past decade, the comptroller’s 26-page report found. That lag in homebuilding left the state with a deep housing shortage: Texas needs 306,000 more homes than it has, according to one estimate cited in the report.

That shortage has fueled competition for a limited supply of housing, especially in the state’s major metro areas — sending housing costs soaring, forcing many would-be first-time homebuyers out of the market and leaving more than half of the state’s tenants spending too much on rent.

Texas’ relatively low cost of living has been a major draw for new residents and relocating companies. But Texas could lose that affordability advantage if local and state officials don’t find some way to boost the state’s housing supply, particularly for lower- and middle-income families, Hegar said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

In regulating AI, Texas lawmakers face balancing act between its benefits and harms (Texas Tribune)

A group of state lawmakers began wading through the complex world of artificial intelligence Tuesday, providing an early glimpse at how Texas may seek to regulate the booming technology.

During a nearly four-hour hearing, the Texas Senate Business and Commerce Committee heard a wide range of concerns about the potential risks of AI, including the spread of misinformation, biased decision-making and violations of consumer privacy. By the end of the hearing, at least some of the 11 committee members appeared convinced that the state should enact laws that regulate how and when private companies use artificial intelligence.

“If you really think about it, it’s a dystopian world we could live in,” Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, said during the hearing. “I think our challenge is, how do we get out there and put in those safeguards?”... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Why Philadelphia is bucking a nationwide surge in evictions (Wall Street Journal)

Courts in Alaska, Indiana, Texas, Michigan and other states have also experimented with diversion, which gained traction in the pandemic when job losses spiked and cities feared rising homelessness. Nationally, evictions have surged back to prepandemic levels, after federal tenant protections expired and rents grew at record rates.

But in Philadelphia, eviction filings remain unusually low. Court filings to remove tenants are down 41% in Philadelphia in the 12 months ending in June, compared with the annual average between years 2016 and 2019. That is according to the Eviction Lab, a research unit at Princeton University. 

The city’s diversion program is the main reason why. It stands out from others because tenant negotiations start before courts get involved, and landlords are required to participate.

“Everyone anticipated that there would be this wave of eviction filings and you saw that nationally,” said Rachel Garland, a housing lawyer with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. “We never saw the wave hit.” 

Philadelphia has no shortage of tenants struggling to make the rent. In 2023, enrollments in the diversion program were higher than the number of eviction filings before the pandemic, the city’s Division of Housing and Community Development said.

“Rents continue to go up,” Garland said.

Philadelphia ranks among the country’s poorest big cities, and renters with little personal savings are most at risk of eviction when they lose jobs, face medical emergencies or experience another financial trigger.

Eviction filings don’t just mean losing housing; they also make it harder to obtain future housing. Court filings create a public record that follows renters when they apply for a new place to live… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

🟪 See also, City Council votes to make eviction diversion program permanent (City of Philadelphia)

Democrats and Republicans greet Covid spike with a collective shrug (Politico)

Democrats and Republicans can agree on one thing coming out of their respective conventions: Almost no one cares about Covid anymore.

Infections are running rampant after the Democratic confab in Chicago, with staffers on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, reporters and other convention-goers all stricken — and in at least one case claiming the positive test was “worth it.” Cases also cropped up after the Republican National Convention in July.

And yet the single most-animating issue of the 2020 election is an afterthought for the major-party nominees coming out of two of the 2024 campaign’s biggest milestones — even as the virus remains an ever-present threat that’s shaped broader debates over key electoral issues like strength of the economy and the future of families’ health and child care.

Both campaigns have struggled with how — and how much — to address a pandemic that the U.S. never fully defeated, but that few Americans still want to dwell on… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

_________________________

We are proud to represent and have represented a wide range of clients in the Austin Metro and Texas Capitol at the intersection of government and business.

Learn more about Bingham Group’s experience here, and review client testimonials here.

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