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- BG Reads 8.30.2024
BG Reads 8.30.2024
🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - August 30, 2024
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
www.binghamgp.com
August 30, 2024
Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 An updated City of Austin org chart (as of 8.22.2024)
🟪 Judge’s order halts Nov. 5 charter election (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Austin has now paid out more than $22 million in settlements related to 2020 racial justice protests (KUT)
🟪 Texas removed 1 million from voter rolls. But most had moved or died. (New York Times)
🟪 How a Trump visit sparked turmoil at America’s most sacred cemetery (Washington Post)
Read On!
[BINGHAM GROUP]
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]
🟪 (NEW) City of Austin Org Chart (as of 8.22.2024)
Note: Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills has departed the city, and Deputy City Manager Jon Fortune is now assuming responsibility (serving also as Assistant City Manager) over:
Austin Fire
Austin Police
Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services
Chief Medical Officer
Downtown Austin Community Court
Forensic Science
Homeland Security & Emergency Management
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Judge’s order halts Nov. 5 charter election (Austin Monitor)
Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble on Thursday ordered the city of Austin to eliminate 13 proposed charter amendments from the Nov. 5 ballot because City Council violated the Texas Open Meetings Act in setting a hearing on the proposed charter items. Other items on the ballot, such as Council races, are not impacted by the order.
In granting the temporary injunction sought by the Save Our Springs Alliance, Bill Bunch and Joe Riddell, the judge found that Council “did not provide adequate notice for the Council’s August 14, 2024 meeting, agenda item number 12, to approve the election.”
The plaintiffs complained that although the city widely publicized the fact that Council would be voting on the new budget on Aug. 14, there was no special advertising about the proposed charter amendments. According to the lawsuit, Council violated the Texas Open Meetings Act by failing to list each of the proposed charter amendments, even though the public would be asked to vote on each of those amendments individually. The judge agreed… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin leaders tackle zoning cases as residents push back (KVUE)
Numerous zoning cases were heard before Austin council members on Thursday during their regular scheduled meeting, with a bulk falling under the city's newest density bonus program known as DB90.
A majority of folks raised questions and concerns about the impacts and asked for postponements of the projects to get a better understanding of what the program would do.
According to the city's planning department, 47 zoning cases applications have been ushered under DB90, which allows developers to build up to 90-feet on commercially zoned properties in exchange for affordable housing… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After millions of dollars and two lawsuits, a hotel to house the homeless opens in Austin (KUT)
The City of Austin bought its first hotel in 2019. The Rodeway Inn, off I-35 in South Austin, was turned into a temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness. It became part of a larger plan between the city and Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, or ECHO, to buy hotels and motels and turn them into housing.
Then the pandemic hit. Very few people were traveling and suddenly the city’s and ECHO’s plan seemed incredibly prescient. Now they could take businesses shattered by the pandemic — in this case, hollowed-out hotels — and turn them into housing for Austin’s growing number of homeless.
“It’s a lot less expensive and a lot more efficient to be able to do it in hotels this way,” former Mayor Steve Adler said in 2021.
Initially, as COVID spread across the country, some of these hotels were used to help people living on the streets quarantine from others. And the need for housing for those living on the streets seemed less pressing. Even as real estate prices in Austin rose quickly during the pandemic, eviction moratoriums kept thousands of people in their homes.
But once bans on evictions ended, the city’s homeless population began to rise. Since 2021, the number of people sleeping on the streets in the Texas capital on any given night has doubled to about 6,400… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin has now paid out more than $22 million in settlements related to 2020 racial justice protests (KUT)
Austin City Council voted Thursday to approve more than $2.1 million for restitution for two victims injured by police during the racial justice protests in 2020. The city has now paid out more than $22 million in lawsuits surrounding police conduct from that time.
Dozens of protesters were shot with so-called "less-lethal" ammunition during the May 2020 racial justice protests. Many were severely injured. Some demonstrators sustained lasting brain trauma, while others had to have the ammunition surgically removed by trauma surgeons at Ascension Seton.
The weapons used to control thousands of protesters in downtown Austin included foam-tipped ammunition and shells filled with lead-pellet bags fired from shotguns. An internal investigation found that APD knew the ammunition was potentially harmful ahead of the protests... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
West Lake Hills budgets for license plate reader cameras (Community Impact)
Following a rash of vehicle thefts and break-ins in late 2023, the city of West Lake Hills has allocated $58,950 to install nine license plate reader cameras, or LPRs, along its main roads.The cost was added to the fiscal year 2024-25 budget at an Aug. 28 council meeting following a presentation from Flock, a security company which provides LPRs to dozens of nearby cities already.
Officers may also query the data collected within the last 30 days for vehicles connected to ongoing investigations.In the past decade, several neighboring police departments have begun using Flock's license plate readers, including departments in Austin, Bee Cave, Round Rock, Pflugerville and Buda.Lakeway and Rollingwood are also planning to try the technology… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Paxton takes Dallas to court over gun ban at State Fair (Texas Tribune)
The state and its third biggest city are set to square off in court over a ban on guns at Texas' most celebrated tribute to itself — the State Fair.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Thursday that he is suing the city of Dallas and state fair officials for its new policy of banning all firearms from the fairgrounds.
The Attorney General’s lawsuit asks a Dallas County District Court to order the City of Dallas and state fair officials not to enforce the gun ban at the Fair during its run from Sept. 27 until Oct. 20… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas removed 1 million from voter rolls. But most had moved or died. (New York Times)
Days after officers acting on behalf of the Texas attorney general raided the homes of Democratic activists and a Latina candidate for the State House, Gov. Greg Abbott promoted his efforts to clear the voter rolls of those who did not belong there. Mr. Abbott, a Republican, said that more than 1.1 million voters had been purged from the list of eligible voters since September 2021, when he signed an election integrity bill into law that Texas Democrats had warned could prevent many eligible people from casting votes.
Officials said the removals were part of the state’s routine maintenance of the voter rolls, ensuring that those who have died or are no longer living at their registered address are removed. But the timing of the announcement from the Republican governor on Monday raised concern among Democratic officials and voting rights advocates, who feared a coordinated effort by top Republican leaders to intimidate voters and tamp down on Democratic efforts to increase registrations ahead of the November vote.
“The message is we’re going to do everything we can to discourage voting in Texas,” said Mike Doyle, the chair of the Democratic Party in Harris County, which includes Houston. “Why else would you announce this as a big victory? This is supposed to be a routine accuracy check that has been going on forever.” Mr. Abbott’s announcement followed the raids last week by the office of the attorney general, Ken Paxton, of members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, along with a variety of Democratic candidates and consultants.It was accompanied by Mr. Paxton’s announcement that he was looking into registration efforts by groups in urban areas across the state as potential violations of law. While the total number of voters removed cited by Mr. Abbott appeared large, it did not represent a significant change in what ordinarily occurs as part of the maintenance of voting rolls in Texas.
In fact, a New York Times analysis of voter registration cancellation data in Texas since 2018 suggests that it was routine. Nearly 500,000 of the voters purged during the time period highlighted by Mr. Abbott were dead. About the same number were cleared after they were put on a list of people who did not vote in two successive general elections and are believed to have moved. Those numbers were roughly equivalent to the number of voters in those categories removed in previous years. There were 18 million registered voters in Texas as of March, up from 16 million in 2020… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
CenterPoint proposes forgoing $110M in profit, spending $5B to improve grid (Houston Chronicle)
CenterPoint Energy proposed Wednesday to forgo approximately $110 million in anticipated profits from its controversial mobile generators in its latest attempt to placate lawmakers, regulators and Houston-area residents enraged over the electric utility’s handling of July’s Hurricane Beryl.
The company also told lawmakers it wants to spend approximately $5 billion from 2026 to 2028 to harden its infrastructure against extreme weather and become the “most admired utility in the country.” The expense is twice the amount proposed in an earlier “resiliency plan” that the utility scrapped after Beryl. If approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, CenterPoint could earn a 9.4% rate of return, essentially profit, on the value of these investments. The new resiliency proposal, which CenterPoint plans to file to the PUC by Jan. 31, 2025, could add more than $3.50 to the average residential customer’s monthly electric bill, CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells said in an interview.
That cost is justified because it offsets the economic impact to the Houston area of not having power, which exceeds $1.4 billion per day, according to Wells’ letter sent Wednesday to state legislators representing the Houston region and who sit on committees focused on utility issues.
CenterPoint also promised to prioritize investments for which the potential benefits exceed the costs and to have a third-party firm confirm that analysis. “We will continue our commitment to executing our work with a mindset of customer affordability, but we are responding with urgency to build the most resilient coastal grid in the country,” Wells said. Wells addressed his letter to state Sen. Charles Schwertner, chair of the Texas Senate's special committee investigating utilities' responses to Beryl, and state Rep. Todd Hunter, chair of the State Affairs committee.
“I appreciate CenterPoint’s movement in becoming a better partner to their ratepayers and to Texas. However, they have yet to hit that mark,” Schwertner said in an email statement responing to CenterPoint's letter. Hunter's office didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.
🟪… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
How a Trump visit sparked turmoil at America’s most sacred cemetery (Washington Post)
Earlier this month, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign contacted military officials about visiting Arlington National Cemetery to mark the third anniversary of the Islamic State bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members during the evacuation from Afghanistan.
Federal law prohibits election-related activities at military cemeteries, and Arlington is the most prestigious and sacred of all. Pentagon officials were deeply concerned about the former president turning the visit into a campaign stop, but they also didn’t want to block him from coming, according to Defense Department officials and internal messages reviewed by The Washington Post.
Officials said they wanted to respect the wishes of grieving family members who wanted Trump there, but at the same time were wary of Trump’s record of politicizing the military. So they laid out ground rules they hoped would wall off politics from the final resting place of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their nation.
Instead, they got sucked into exactly the kind of crisis they were hoping to avoid. A cemetery employee tried to enforce the rules as provided to her by blocking Trump’s team from bringing cameras to the graves of U.S. service members killed in recent years, according to a senior defense official and another person briefed on the incident.
A larger male campaign aide insisted the camera was allowed and pushed past the cemetery employee, leaving her shocked. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to the first report of the altercation, from NPR on Tuesday, by accusing, without evidence, the employee of “suffering from a mental health episode.”
Defense officials said that the employee was trying to do her job and that the claim of a mental health episode was false. On Wednesday Cheung said the employee “initiated physical contact that was unwarranted and unnecessary.” Cheung also said the campaign would release footage to support his claim but has not.
The campaign did, however, post a TikTok of the event on Wednesday — exactly what military officials tried to prevent. The use of the footage marked a flagrant violation of the law against partisan actions at military cemeteries, defense officials said.
The visit comes as Trump struggles to regain his footing in a race altered by Vice President Kamala Harris’s replacement of President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket. He often portrays himself as a champion of the military, but Democrats point to his public and private remarks denigrating service members. 🟪… (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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