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September 7, 2023

In today's BG Reads:

🏗️ Austin Council approves development changes as required by state law

⚖️  Impeachment Watch: Attorney General Ken Paxton’s former top deputy speaks

🇲🇽  Mexico is likely to get its first female president after top parties choose 2 women as candidates

🎙️ Listen: BG Podcast Ep. 214 -> We focus on developments with the so-called "Death Star" bill, House Bill 2127, preemption legislation passed in the recent Texas legislative session. (Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify).

Read on!

[BINGHAM GROUP NEWS]

Chris Stewart, a former city of Austin Chief Information Officer (2020 - 2023), joins Bingham Group as a consultant.

Bingham Group consultants are contract specialists providing strategic advice to firm clients across business, community, and policy matters in the Austin Metro and Texas.

Areas of expertise include: Economic Development/Incentives, Municipal Policy & Appropriations, Procurement, and Research & Analysis.

📩  Contact us to discuss your issue. 📩

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Council approves development changes as required by state law (Austin Monitor)

With several new state laws going into effect on Friday, Sept. 1, Austin City Council approved some significant changes to the rules governing the city’s Development Services Department this past Thursday. Most of those changes are aimed at making it easier for developers to get through the city’s often lengthy development review process.

The city has posted a web page to explain the changes with this note: “We are working through the impacts these new bills have on our processes and appreciate your understanding during this transition.”

In addition, the department promises to host a “virtual stakeholder meeting to share more information about changes to our subdivision application process and answer any questions.”

Applicants have long complained about delays in review and inspections related to preliminary plans, site plans and building permits, among other things... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Related listen 🎙️ -> Our BG Podcast discussion regarding McKinsey & Co.’s report on the city of Austin’s development review process.

And in other Austin Metro News:

➡️ Opportunity Austin 5.0 details strategic plan -> LINK TO FULL STORY

➡️ Dallas’ Jacobs tapped to carry out $517M in Austin ISD capital improvements (Austin Business Journal) -> LINK TO FULL STORY 

➡️ Interim homeless strategy officer named following Dianna Grey's resignation (Austin American-Statesman) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

➡️ Budget shortfall forces Austin Music Foundation to cease operations -> LINK TO FULL STORY

[TEXAS NEWS]

Ken Paxton’s top deputy, the first impeachment witness, describes an attorney general out of control (Texas Tribune)

At the end of September 2020, it finally made sense to Jeff Mateer why his boss, Attorney General Ken Paxton, was devoting so much of the agency’s attention to Paxton’s friend, Austin real estate investor Nate Paul.

In Wednesday testimony that took up most of the second day of Paxton’s impeachment trial, Mateer said that for months he could not figure out why Paxton had brushed off repeated warnings that assisting Paul in his business disputes was an improper use of state resources… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

OTHER TEXAS NEWS:

➡️ Texas’ political environment driving faculty to leave, survey finds (Texas Tribune) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

➡️ A judge orders Texas to move a floating barrier that’s used to deter migrants between US and Mexico (Associated Press) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

➡️ Behind the lines of Texas A&M’s diversity war (The Washington Post) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

[NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS]

Mexico is likely to get its first female president after top parties choose 2 women as candidates (Associated Press)

With the selection of former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum as the candidate of the country’s ruling party in next June’s election, Mexico will for the first time have time two women from its main political movements competing for the presidency.

Sheinbaum, as well as the opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, have insisted that Mexico is ready to be led by a woman, but it will not be an easy path.

On Wednesday night, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party announced that Sheinbaum had defeated five internal party rivals – all men. López Obrador has put women in important positions in his Cabinet and been a mentor for Sheinbaum, even while being accused at times of male chauvinism… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

OTHER NEWS:

➡️ Mexico decriminalizes abortion, extending Latin American trend of widening access to procedure (Associated Press) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

➡️ Presidential centers from Hoover to Bush and Obama unite to warn of fragile state of US democracy (Associated Press) -> LINK TO FULL STORY

➡️ Real-Estate Doom Loop Threatens America’s Banks (Wall Street Journal)-> LINK TO FULL STORY

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