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- BG Reads 9.25.2024
BG Reads 9.25.2024
🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - September 25, 2024
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
www.binghamgp.com
September 25, 2024
Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Watch live: Austin's mayoral candidates discuss housing, transit and the future of the city (KUT)
🟪 Austin's police union, city agree to a $218 million, five-year labor contract (KUT)
🟪 Here's what's on the minds of city managers south of Austin amid booming growth (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 The U.S. News college rankings are out. Cue the rage and obsession. (New York Times)
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]
🟪 [TODAY @12:30PM] 2024 LBJ Austin Mayoral Forum
🟪 [TODAY @6:30PM] District 2 League of Women Voters Austin Area Candidate Forum
🟪 The Austin Council has seven (6) regular meetings left in 2024
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
📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 4 - Video (9.19.2024)
📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 7 - Video (9.5.2024)
✅ All candidate forums will are scheduled from 6:30pm to 8pm.
✅ All forums will be streamed live and archived on ATXN.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Watch live: Austin's mayoral candidates discuss housing, transit and the future of the city (KUT)
Five people are running to become Austin's next mayor. Before you head to the polls this fall to cast your vote, you can hear directly from the candidates on their vision for the city.
The LBJ Urban Lab at UT Austin and Austin PBS are holding a mayoral forum from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Austin PBS headquarters. You can watch the discussion live in the video player below.
The forum will be moderated by KUT News' City Hall reporter Luz Moreno-Lozano, Univision reporter Francheska Castillo and Kylee Howard, an editor with UT's student newspaper. The Daily Texan… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin's police union, city agree to a $218 million, five-year labor contract (KUT)
Austin's police union and the city agreed in principle Monday to a five-year labor contract.
The $218 million deal, which comes after years of occasionally contentious negotiations, would give police officers a 28% raise over the next five years. The complete details have not yet been made available to the public.
Austin City Council is expected to vote on the contract Oct. 10… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Energy still pondering new generation plan (Austin Monitor)
As part of Austin Energy’s effort to arrive at a new generation plan, the utility has spent this year talking to the public about what is most important to them when they think about electric service. According to Austin Energy’s chief operating officer, Lisa Martin, what the public wants most is reliability in their electric service, but there are other factors nearly as important – such as cost and protecting the environment.
On Tuesday, Martin told the City Council Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee that the utility is considering 17 different portfolios to see what best addresses priorities of Council and the public. They will be testing out those portfolios in the next few weeks to see what seems to work best for Austin. Martin said she expects Council to vote on Austin Energy’s new generation plan before the end of the year.
Half a dozen environmentalists came to tell Council they do not want a new natural gas plant. However, Paul Robbins, who serves on the Resource Management Commission and has long been devoted to environmental causes, was not among them. Robbins, perhaps surprisingly, has concluded that a new gas plant could be good for the environment... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Here's what's on the minds of city managers south of Austin amid booming growth (Austin Business Journal)
The rural landscape that once rolled past on the drive between Austin and San Antonio is no more, as homes, industrial facilities and retail centers have largely filled in the open spaces along I-35.
The three biggest cities along the route that are closest to Austin — Kyle, San Marcos and Buda — have been at the forefront of that boom. And they're still growing.
During this year's Austin-San Antonio Growth Summit, which was held Sept. 17 in New Braunfels and sponsored by the Austin and San Antonio business journals, their city managers participated in a panel regarding that growth, as well as what they'd like to see from the development community and more. Here's a snippet of the discussion… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Appeals court says Texas State Fair can ban guns (Texas Tribune)
A newly created state appeals court denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton request to temporarily block the State Fair of Texas’ policy banning all firearms from its fairgrounds as the event is set to start Friday.
The ruling comes after a Dallas County District Court struck down a similar request from Paxton on the new policy. The District Court Judge agreed with State Fair officials that they could enforce a gun ban as a private nonprofit.
Paxton says the fair's gun ban violates state law, which bars most government bodies from prohibiting weapons. State Fair officials say it has the right as a private nonprofit, and the city of Dallas says it has no role in the fair's gun policy.
Paxton said on social media Tuesday evening that he will next ask the Texas Supreme Court to overturn the ban… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
Mexico’s most popular president in decades is retiring. What will he leave behind? (Associated Press)
Many Mexicans will feel a deep sense of loss when folksy, charismatic, nationalistic President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leaves office on Sept. 30 — and that’s no surprise.
López Obrador himself has spent an inordinate amount of time talking about his own legacy — and his place in history — over his six-year term, something he brings up at almost every one of his marathonic daily 7 a.m. media briefings.
But what legacy will the rumpled, grinning López Obrador leave behind? It is perhaps the main question for a man who is obsessed with history, and one thing appears clear: he has changed the way politics is done in Mexico, perhaps forever.
Unlike decades of reserved and distant presidents, López Obrador has built a deep personal connection with many Mexicans. He has stripped the office of the thousands of presidential guards, limousines and walled compounds that once characterized it, saying “you can’t have a rich government with poor people.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
The U.S. News college rankings are out. Cue the rage and obsession. (New York Times)
After months of tumult on American college campuses, relative stability in one realm returned on Tuesday, when U.S. News & World Report published its oft-disparaged but nevertheless closely watched rankings. Many top schools held the same, or similar, spots they had a year ago. Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution. Few franchises in American higher education are as contentious as the U.S. News rankings.
Over the decades, their publisher has faced trouble with manipulated data, complaints about murky methodologies, accusations of revenge and the foundational question of whether it is appropriate to rank colleges.
To U.S. News, which retired its print newsmagazine in 2010, the rankings are a bastion of its largely bygone influence. They are also a source of millions of dollars each year, as universities pay licensing fees to promote how they fared.
U.S. News, which insists that its business relationships with schools do not affect rankings, contends that it is performing a public service by distilling a chaotic collegiate marketplace for weary consumers. Indeed, to students and their parents, the rankings can be tools for narrowing college searches, and status symbols surrounding admissions to certain schools.
To university leaders, the rankings are often publicly heralded but privately detested. To regulators, including Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona, the rankings are responsible for “an unhealthy obsession with selectivity" and the development of “the false altar of U.S. News and World Report." And to almost everyone outside U.S. News, they are opaque and, ultimately, almost uniformly misunderstood… 🟪 (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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