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- BG Reads 9.24.2024
BG Reads 9.24.2024
🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - September 24, 2024
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
www.binghamgp.com
September 24, 2024
Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Austin police officers may soon get largest pay raise in decades if council, union OK deal (Austin American-Statesman)
🟪 Watson, Council members refine direction in push to keep Marshalling Yard shelter open (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Kyle mayor weighs in on efforts in the Austin suburb to boost its downtown (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 Going driverless in Texas will take a trip to DMV for autonomous vehicle fleets in future (Houston Chronicle)
🟪 For some parents, surging child-care costs could determine how they vote (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]
🟪 The Austin Council has seven (6) regular meetings left in 2024
🟪 [NEW] 2024 LBJ Austin Mayoral Forum - September 25th
District 2 - September 25th
Dove Springs Recreation Center, 5801 Ainez Drive, Austin 78744
District 10 - September 30th
Dell Jewish Community Campus, Epstein Family Community Hall, 7300 Hart Lane, Austin 78731
Mayor - October 3rd
Austin City Hall Council Chambers, 301 W. 2nd St. Austin 78701
District 6 - October 7th
Hope Presbyterian Church, 11512 Olson Drive, Austin 78750
đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: District 4 - Video (9.19.2024)
đź“ş City Council Candidate Forum: District 7 - Video (9.5.2024)
âś… All candidate forums will are scheduled from 6:30pm to 8pm.
âś… All forums will be streamed live and archived on ATXN.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin police officers may soon get largest pay raise in decades if council, union OK deal (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin police officers could receive a 28% raise over the next five years after the city and police union shook hands Monday on a tentative contract after months of bargaining.
The contract is expected to cost $217.8 million throughout the life of the contract, according to a press release sent by the city.
The contract, which still needs the approval of the Austin City Council and association members, would keep Austin police officers among the highest-paid compared with the other eight largest cities in Texas, according to a wage study conducted by the city.
Getting a contract has been touted by some city officials as the best way to improve morale, recruitment and retention in the Austin Police Department, which has struggled with all three in the past few years. The department has about 350 vacancies.
The city and the Austin Police Association have been without a full-time contract for nearly a year and a half… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Watson, Council members refine direction in push to keep Marshalling Yard shelter open (Austin Monitor)
Mayor Kirk Watson and other members of City Council want to give city staff specific directions and benchmarks in their work to keep the Marshalling Yard Emergency Shelter open indefinitely and keep other city shelters from becoming overwhelmed with the number of experiencing homelessness.
In a recent posting on the City Council Message Board, Watson responded to District 2 Council Member Vanessa Fuentes’ concerns about the cost and open-ended future for the facility, which was slated to close in March and which sits in District 3 just outside her district. Staff will need to find $9 million to operate the Marshalling Yard for another year.
An amended version of the relevant item for Thursday’s agenda includes the direction that the $9 million can’t come from elsewhere in the homelessness services system. It also calls for a plan to achieve a better rate of positive exits into stable housing for the 300 occupants at the Marshalling Yard, which staff has reported at between 10 percent and 20 percent in recent months… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Kyle mayor weighs in on efforts in the Austin suburb to boost its downtown (Austin Business Journal)
Travis Mitchell has been talking about revamping Kyle's downtown for so long that he's progressed from doing so as a private citizen to a member of the City Council to the occupant of the mayor's office. Now in his third – and final – term leading the city south of Austin, his words are transforming into action.
Kyle, the second fastest-growing city of its size in the country, has been working publicly and privately to acquire entire city blocks downtown and revamp a dormant public process to gather input from residents about what they want. The aim is to work with private developers to have the first buildings occupied by the end of the decade.
The overall goal is create a sense of place and destination that's viewed as lacking in Kyle compared to neighboring San Marcos, Buda and Lockhart. The vision calls for a chunk of downtown — 10 blocks by 10 blocks — with 100 businesses, an expanded city hall, parking garage and much more when all is said and done… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Attorney files complaint about consultant’s statements on Central Health (Austin Monitor)
On Monday, attorney Fred Lewis filed a complaint alleging the unauthorized practice of law by Steve Herbst, the lead consultant on a contract with Forvis Mazars to review the performance of Central Health for Travis County. The complaint was based on the fact that Herbst told the Travis County Commissioners Court, “We are happy to report that there were no reportable conditions or violations of law that we found as part of our performance review” of Central Health.
Lewis has worked on a yearslong campaign to show that the $35 million per year Central Health gives the University of Texas Dell Medical School is illegal because it is not being used for the hospital district’s mission – providing health care for the poor. He expressed extreme frustration about the fact that Herbst’s contentions that there were no violations of the law was widely quoted and reported. As a non-lawyer, Herbst does not have the authority or the background to make declarations concerning violations of law, Lewis said.
The Austin Monitor reached out to Herbst for comment but received no response.
In the complaint, which was filed with the Texas Supreme Court Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee, Lewis said that neither Herbst nor any of his team members are attorneys. “Therefore, they do not have the authority or the expertise to say whether the law has been violated,” he said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Dallas adds new police chief to list of critical city needs (Dallas Morning News)
The timeline for selecting a new police chief remains unclear, but some council members have indicated they want to choose a permanent city manager first.
“I think we need to settle on a permanent city manager who can then lead a national search for a police chief,” council member Paula Blackmon told The Dallas Morning News on Friday. Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert told The News a transition plan for a successor for Dallas police Chief Eddie GarcĂa is still being determined.
Tolbert said she hasn’t named an interim police chief, and a final day has not been set for GarcĂa’s exit from Dallas. “No, I have not made that decision and will hopefully have an opportunity to sit down with the chief next week to discuss transition,” Tolbert told The News via text. Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax announced Thursday that GarcĂa would be leaving Dallas to become an assistant city manager overseeing public safety in the state’s capital starting Nov. 4.
The move rocked City Hall, with many of Dallas’ top leaders saying they first learned of GarcĂa’s pending departure only after Austin announced it. Tolbert texted the Dallas City Council members Thursday after the announcement and said she wished it wasn’t the case. “As you know, we received the news yesterday regarding Chief GarcĂa’s departure to Austin,” Tolbert said in a weekly note to city staffers Friday. “I will update you at the appropriate time with our next steps.”
The City Council hired Baker Tilly, a search firm, to recruit the city’s new top executive. Council members have said they intend to name a successor before the end of the year. Four months ago, the interim city manager and other city officials celebrated crafting a deal where GarcĂa committed to remaining as police chief until at least 2027 with financial incentives, including a promise to boost his pay to ensure he remained the highest-paid police chief of Texas’ largest cities. GarcĂa, Dallas’ top cop since 2021 and the city’s first Latino police chief, made $306,440 a year. The deal also called for him to earn an extra $10,000 bonus every six months, but he will leave Dallas before collecting any additional money. What changed since May was still unclear Friday… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Going driverless in Texas will take a trip to DMV for autonomous vehicle fleets in future (Houston Chronicle)
Concerned with the possibility of problems ahead as companies ditch drivers for autonomous vehicles, Texas lawmakers are aiming at a light touch — but new requirements — for companies behind driverless cars and trucks.
“The state needs to be in a position to step in and have a set of rules,” said state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “But we are not fixing to slip something through here. We are going to have a methodology.”
Nichols, with support from other senators, said he expects legislation in the upcoming session will require companies such as Waymo, Cruise and Aurora to inform the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles when they pull drivers from vehicles and allow the vehicles to make solo trips.
The DMV would then handle permitting and registration of the vehicles and some oversight of reported problems with the systems. The new regulations, which would require approval from the legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott, would apply only to fleets of driverless cars and trucks, such as those used to ferry trailers of goods or small robotaxis carrying people.
The rules and registration would not apply to privately owned autonomous vehicles. That exclusion is important to the industry, which is nearing — albeit slowly — sales of private self-driving cars and small trucks, said Nick Steingart, director of state affairs for the Alliance of Automotive Innovation. Nichols and other lawmakers began talks over the summer with companies involved in autonomous vehicle development.
The aim, he said, was to not rewrite or change trucking and paid ride rules, but integrate driverless vehicles into those rules. Federal officials, meanwhile, govern the technology and the safety requirements related to the industry. Nichols said the state must have a system that responds to issues related to the driverless vehicles and maintain that the companies are using Texas’ roads safely without stifling innovation.
“The industry is already working with us, we do not want to disrupt that,” Nichols said. Texas lawmakers in 2017 approved rules for autonomous vehicles, largely to get ahead of cities in the state setting their own rules.
Following the debate over ride hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft — wherein the state superseded city and county rules that attempted to regulate the companies similar to cab companies, which the companies fought — state leaders opted to get ahead with driverless cars. Rather than leave the changing technology and its regulations to cities, state lawmakers stepped in… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
For some parents, surging child-care costs could determine how they vote (Washington Post)
Along with housing prices, child-care costs are among the last remnants of inflation haunting Americans — a point that Biden administration economists have conceded. Although gas, cars and groceries, including bread, bacon and vegetables, have all become cheaper in the past year, day-care costs have risen 6.2 percent — more than double the rate of overall inflation.
Those high costs are increasingly factoring into how people plan to vote in the presidential election, just over six weeks away.
More than one-third of mothers who are registered to vote said they worry “a lot” about affording child care, according to a recent KFF poll. Vice President Kamala Harris has made the “care economy” a cornerstone of her platform, vowing to permanently increase the child tax credit, add a one-time $6,000 credit for newborns and cap child-care costs at 7 percent of a working family’s income.
Former president Donald Trump has also said he would consider expanding the child tax credit, though he has not offered further details. Meanwhile, his running mate, JD Vance, has argued that children would benefit from a stay-at-home parent, suggesting families should rely more on “grandma and grandpa” to save on child care… (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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