BG Reads 9.26.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - September 26, 2024

September 26, 2024

Bingham Group Reads

Presented by:

www.binghamgp.com

September 26, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 The 9.26 Austin Council meeting agenda and livestream link

🟪 Watch: Austin's mayoral candidates discuss housing, transit and the future of the city (KUT)

🟪 Council work sessions slated to resume, with some changes (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Travis County officials approve increased tax rate, $888.7M budget for Central Health (Community Impact)

🟪 Dallas Police Chief Eddie García says, ‘I’m leaving on my terms’ (Dallas Morning News)

🟪 Biden breaks with environmentalists, House Dems on chip bill (Politico)

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

  • 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 2 - Video (9.26.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 4 - Video (9.19.2024)

✅ 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: 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 held a mayoral forum Wednesday at the Austin PBS headquarters. You can watch the discussion in the video player below... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Council work sessions slated to resume, with some changes (Austin Monitor)

It looks like City Council work sessions may be resuming soon. After three consecutive cancellations, there was some speculation that work sessions might be eliminated, or only utilized for necessary Council briefings. However, today, Council will vote on a proposal from City Manager T.C. Broadnax to restructure work sessions beginning in October.

Work sessions are typically the Tuesday before a regular Thursday Council meeting and provide an opportunity for members of the dais to hear departmental briefings or publicly discuss items on the Thursday agenda without voting.

The recent cancellations seemed to be in response to a court ruling last month, when Judge Daniella Deseta Lyttle provided further clarification on an April ruling against the city in a lawsuit over violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act. The August clarification determined that public comment may not be necessary during briefings alone but should be required at work sessions if Council is discussing items slated for future votes or action.

In a memo on Sept. 20, Broadnax outlined an ordinance that was added to the addendum for today’s Council meeting agenda. The ordinance would repeal and replace the prior procedures for future Council meetings and work sessions, likely reinstating regular work sessions. The memo explained that, for work sessions beginning in October, “The public will be allowed to register to speak on briefings, preselected Council meeting agenda items, and Council Items of interest posted on the work session agenda.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Travis County officials approve increased tax rate, $888.7M budget for Central Health (Community Impact)

Following weeks of scrutiny and a procession of several long-winded discussions regarding the county’s local hospital district, Travis County commissioners authorized an $888.7 million budget for Central Health’s 2024-25 fiscal year—which includes a tax rate increase…  🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin's new composting requirement takes effect next week. Here's what it means (Austin American-Statesman)

A change in how multifamily communities in Austin collect compost is coming next week.

Starting Tuesday, Oct. 1, the City of Austin will require all multifamily communities with five or more dwelling units to provide convenient access to commercial composting collection services to residents and employees.

The new composting requirement for Austin extends to apartments, condos, non-state dorms, assisted living facilities and nursing homes. More than half of Austin residents live in multifamily communities.

Austin Resource Recovery will require these properties to provide a one-gallon composting container for each residential unit. Compost must be collected weekly, with no overflow containers.

The properties must also accept certain types of compost, including food scraps, food-soiled paper and BPI-certified compostable products.

This latest requirement is part of the city's Zero Waste initiative, which aims to reduce 90% of waste from landfills and incinerators by 2040. Instead, this waste is to be redirected to compost.

"Keeping food scraps and other organic material out of the landfill is important to help Austin reach its zero waste goal," said ARR Director Richard McHale. "We are proud that Austin is the first city in Texas to require composting access for residents who live in multifamily communities."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

COTA raising $65M toward its long-awaited amusement park (Austin Business Journal)

Circuit of The Americas aims to raise $65 million to build a long-planned amusement park at its site in Southeast Austin.

That's according to a pair of Sept. 23 filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filings detail how Delaware-based COTA Emerald Fund LP has raised more than $46 million of the sum so far — about $36 million from a group of 14 unidentified investors, and $10 million from an unidentified single investor.

Alyssa Epstein, COTA's general counsel who is listed as an executive in the filings, said in a Sept. 24 email to the Austin Business Journal that the money was from a recent fundraiser "in connection with amusement park construction." She declined further comment, outside of saying COTA plans to "share the development with Austin in 2025."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Another Austin suburb is getting in on the data center boom (Austin Business Journal)

Data centers are seemingly popping up everywhere in the Austin metro, including Hutto, Pflugerville, Taylor and even Bastrop and Caldwell counties. It's time to add Georgetown to the list.

That's because Austin-based Blueprint Projects won approval from the Georgetown City Council on Sept. 24 for a property tax abatement for its planned $160 million project on a 10-acre parcel at 1201 Westinghouse Road. The company recently received financial incentives for a separate project in Taylor that could reach $1 billion in investment.

In Georgetown, city officials said Blueprint Projects is planning to build a 45,000-square-foot, 10-megawatt data center. The company also could build a second, identical facility at the site in another phase of the project. The company's investment was pegged at $160 million, although the minimum would be $90 million combined between the two phases and represent real property and not personal property improvements at the site.

The incentives agreement with Blueprint subsidiary GPP Projects LLC provides a 10-year property tax abatement equal to 50% of the real property value. It requires the company to invest $45 million, start construction by Aug. 1, 2025, and complete it by Dec. 31, 2026. The incentive is valued at about $885,000… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Dallas Police Chief Eddie García says, ‘I’m leaving on my terms’ (Dallas Morning News)

In his first public remarks since confirming he’s leaving for Austin, police Chief Eddie García told The Dallas Morning News in an exclusive interview Tuesday that he has considered retiring since May but no single event precipitated his decision. “I’m leaving on my terms,” García told The News in a 90-minute interview in his office at the Jack Evans Police Headquarters.

“I don’t think people truly understand how difficult that can be for police chiefs in this era.” García, 53, pushed back against assertions his decision was sparked by a November ballot initiative that would mandate how many officers the city needs on its police force. “That did not play a role in me making this decision — in the least bit,” said García, who in his more than three years leading the Dallas force has overseen annual drops in violent crime.

The popular city leader hangs up his badge after more than 30 years in law enforcement to become Austin’s assistant city manager under his former boss, T.C. Broadnax. In the spring, Broadnax left the city manager’s job in Dallas to take the same position in Austin. Last week, news of García’s departure stunned city leaders, his own command staff and the department’s rank and file. The timing frustrated García, who said he wanted to break the news himself. “I do feel it kind of robbed me a little bit of my goodbye,” García said.

“There has been a narrative portrayed because I didn’t have an opportunity to truly spell out what was going through my head.” The chief said his decision was most linked to what he described as a “window of opportunity” that opened after the position overseeing Austin’s public safety departments became vacant in August. García signed Austin’s offer letter early last week; his last day in Dallas will be Nov. 1. García said he has no information from Dallas’ interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert on his possible involvement in helping select the next chief.

Just four months ago, Tolbert pledged García would stay in Dallas until at least mid-2027. The city committed to keeping him among the highest-paid Texas police chiefs with a $306,440 base salary and a $10,000 retention bonus every six months. He’ll leave without collecting any of the bonuses. The offer letter addendum does not explicitly say García committed to staying in Dallas, but he said in June “that is the intent.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas county challenges First Amendment ruling on library book bans in 5th Circuit hearing (Austin American-Statesman)

For 30 years, the precedent set in Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board has barred government officials and librarians in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana from removing books “simply because they dislike the ideas within them.”

On behalf of a Texas county on Tuesday, high-profile conservative attorney Jonathan Mitchell asked all 17 judges on the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to discard that ruling, arguing that library content decisions are “government speech, immune from First Amendment scrutiny.” Republican attorneys general of 17 states have put their weight behind this argument in a case involving Llano County, which was sued by seven public library patrons in 2021 for what the plaintiffs allege were unconstitutional removals of 17 books. Mitchell ceded some of his argument time to Florida Solicitor General Henry Whitaker on Tuesday.

If the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges agree, the case will likely go the U.S. Supreme Court — with the potential to affect public and school libraries across the country. Attorneys for the plaintiffs and several civil rights groups say a ruling in Mitchell's favor would allow groups in power to pass laws discriminating against minority groups and ideas, turning libraries from "institutions of knowledge" into "political institutions."

The plaintiffs also argued such a ruling would open the floodgates for challenges to other decisions based on First Amendment jurisprudence. "Unlike the First Amendment, which has been written into the constitution for 233 years, the government speech doctrine is a judge-made rule of relatively recent vintage," Ryan Borden, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in court. "When you have it being used to do the things that the First Amendment doesn't allow — discriminate by viewpoint, suppress unpopular ideas — ... the doctrine has to give way."

Mitchell, however, argued that the precedent barring viewpoint-based book removals is wrong because the government has "no constitutional obligation" to provide residents with libraries or include certain books in its collection… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Biden breaks with environmentalists, House Dems on chip bill (Politico)

Breaking with environmental groups and despite objections from House Democratic leaders, President Joe Biden plans to sign a new bill that weakens some environmental requirements on federally funded microchip projects. In a tense vote that sparked a bitter back-and-forth Monday night, the Building Chips in America Act passed the House over strident objections from key Democratic committee leaders, with Democratic defectors linking arms with Republicans.

In a statement provided exclusively to POLITICO late on Tuesday, a White House official said Biden will sign the bill, which “will allow us to continue our efforts to ensure Americans across the country can benefit from the promise of the Investing in America agenda while protecting communities and the environment.”

Biden’s decision could widen existing fissures between the Democratic Party’s pro-business and environmental wings. And his approval risks angering environmentalists, which see the bill as a giveaway to the chip industry and a potential threat to the environment. Monday’s House vote marks a big win for the microchip lobby, which for nearly two years has been trying to dilute the environmental-impact rules attached to the Biden administration’s multibillion-dollar funding program for microchip plants.

The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provided $39 billion in subsidies to American chip manufacturing projects, an effort to boost U.S. job growth and industrial capacity in a growing global industry while protecting against China. But recipients of that money are required to complete federal environmental reviews under the decades-old National Environmental Policy Act before they can receive funding — a first for an industry unaccustomed to the extra environmental red tape accompanying federal subsidies. Soon after the ink was dry on the law, industry lobbyists began pressuring Capitol Hill to exempt some projects from NEPA and shorten the litigation timeline for others. They warned that without those changes, construction of chip facilities — and by extension, the high-tech industrial renaissance promised by Biden — could be delayed for months or years.

_________________________

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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