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- BG Reads // August 22, 2025
BG Reads // August 22, 2025
A.J. Bingham
August 22, 2025
Presented By
www.binghamgp.com
August 21, 2025
✅ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Doggett won’t seek reelection to Congress if new district is upheld by courts, paving way for Casar (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Austin’s top public safety official tapped to lead Fort Worth Police Department (Austin American-Statesman)
🟪 Eviction filings in the Austin area are the highest they've been in five years (KUT)
🟪 Texas House approves youth camp safety, flood relief bills following Central Texas flooding (Community Impact)
🟪 Democrats alarmed over new data showing voters fleeing to GOP (The Hill)
🟪 With Fed under pressure, Jerome Powell prepares for a high-stakes speech (NPR)
READ ON!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart
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[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ Doggett won’t seek reelection to Congress if new district is upheld by courts, paving way for Casar (Texas Tribune)
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the dean of Texas’ congressional delegation, announced Thursday he would not run for reelection to his Austin-based seat if a new Republican-drawn map is in effect for the 2026 midterms.
Doggett, 78, has represented his hometown of Austin for over 50 years, in both the Legislature and Congress. First elected to Congress in 1994 — the last year Democrats won a statewide race in Texas — he survived numerous Republican redistricting efforts throughout his tenure as the number of Texas Democrats in Congress dwindled.
In announcing his decision, Doggett is ceding his newly drawn 37th Congressional District, a deep-blue district that encompasses much of Austin, to Rep. Greg Casar. Casar, 36, currently represents the 35th Congressional District, which runs from Austin to San Antonio but is on the verge of being redrawn by Republicans to contain less than 10% of Casar’s current constituency.
Texas Republicans pursued the mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump, crafting new district lines aimed at yielding five more GOP seats in Texas in the 2026 midterms. To do so, Republicans packed as many Democrats into one Austin seat as possible, rather than leaving the city split into two blue districts… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Austin’s top public safety official tapped to lead Fort Worth Police Department (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin’s top executive overseeing public safety is leaving City Hall for a new role in Fort Worth.
Assistant City Manager Eddie Garcia, who oversees Austin police, fire and EMS, will become Fort Worth’s next police chief, less than a year after taking the job in Austin. City Manager T.C. Broadnax confirmed Garcia’s departure in a written statement.
“I am confident that Mr. Garcia will serve the residents of Fort Worth with the same passion and commitment as I have personally witnessed in both Dallas and Austin,” Broadnax said.
Broadnax recruited Garcia to Austin last November, shortly after leaving his job as Dallas city manager to become Austin’s top unelected official. Garcia had been serving as Dallas police chief before joining Broadnax’s executive team in Austin.
Fort Worth launched a search for a new police chief in February. In July, the American-Statesman reported that Garcia was named a finalist. At a Fort Worth town hall meeting, Garcia said he felt more comfortable as a sworn officer than a City Hall administrator, the Dallas Morning News reported… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Eviction filings in the Austin area are the highest they've been in five years (KUT)
Eviction filings by landlords in Travis County are the highest they’ve been since at least 2020, according to data from the Eviction Lab, a research group at Princeton University.
Austin, like many cities, had an eviction moratorium in place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But that protective measure was lifted in late 2021. By March 2022, eviction filings started to return to pre-pandemic levels, according to Eviction Lab data.
"A lot of times, the laws that we have in place, the protections we have for renters, the resources that we have, those are things that can matter as much or even more than affordability levels,” said Juan Pablo Garnham, the audience and community engagement editor for the Eviction Lab.
Garnham said he’s seen an uptick in filings in the Austin area over the last several months.
“We are in a place that looks much worse than the previous years, it seems,” he said.
An eviction filing does not mean a renter was evicted, but that a judge has to rule on the case. Eviction Lab data show that 1,125 landlords filed to evict their tenants in July 2024. In July 2025, landlords made 1,300 filings… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Developer, landowner sue Travis County over East Austin landfill (Austin Business Journal)
An old landfill in East Austin is at the heart of a legal battle that could determine the future of a potentially transformative mixed-use development planned almost 15 miles away on far South Congress Avenue.
Austin-based Graham Development announced plans in 2023 for a 43-acre, transit-oriented mixed-use project at 7900 S. Congress Ave. that would bring 210,000 square feet of office space, 1,218 multifamily units and 136,000 square feet of retail space to the area, in addition to affordable housing. But that project is at risk.
That's because part of the development would be built atop a scrapyard that Graham Development intends to relocate to 9500 E. U.S. Highway 290, the site of a landfill in East Austin that stopped accepting new dumping and closed in 1982. Plans to relocate the scrapyard were denied by Travis County, prompting Graham Development and Moo Moo Meadows LLC, the owner of the landfill property, to file a lawsuit against the county.
The lawsuit, filed July 31 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas Austin Division, alleges that the county’s land use denial was illegal and that the county has allowed the closed landfill to pollute the land with toxins and heavy metals despite numerous orders to address the problem over the past several decades… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ UT Regents approve $38.8 million contract for athletic director, keeping him in Austin through 2036 (KUT)
The University of Texas System Board of Regents has signed off on a nearly $40 million contract for UT Austin Vice President and Athletic Director Chris Del Conte — keeping him on the Forty Acres through 2036.
"Without a doubt, at UT Austin, we have the best athletic director in the country," UT System Regent Kevin Eltife said at Thursday's meeting. "I know with passage of this agenda item, we are all grateful and excited that we'll be working with Chris for many years to come."
Del Conte's previous contract, which was set to expire in 2030, guaranteed a total of $19.3 million. The new contract, which starts next year and runs through 2036, guarantees $38.8 million and more than $5 million in performance incentives.
The updated contract also includes the use of two dealership cars — or $7,500 each year instead — and memberships to the University of Texas Club, the University of Texas Golf Club and the Headliners Club of Austin.
Del Conte has been at the helm of Texas Athletics since 2017… 🟪 (READ MORE)
[TEXAS/US NEWS]
✅ UT System nixes faculty senates, approves restrictions on campus protests (Texas Tribune)
The University of Texas System Board of Regents authorized campus presidents on Thursday to replace faculty senates with less independent versions of the bodies.
The decision is a turning point for the state’s largest university system that shifts academic and hiring decisions once left to faculty and university leaders into the hands of lawmakers and governor-appointed regents.
The move comes in response to a new state law requiring Texas universities to overhaul the faculty groups. But while other schools in the state have opted to reform existing bodies in collaboration with faculty, UT regents’ vote represents a hard reset in the relationship between faculty and their schools.
Regents also authorized major policy changes that will significantly limit free speech on campuses in response to pro-Palestinian protests last year… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Texas House approves youth camp safety, flood relief bills following Central Texas flooding (Community Impact)
House lawmakers approved six bills Aug. 21, all of which were drafted in response to the July 4-5 floods that killed at least 137 people in Central and West Texas.
Lawmakers said the bills were designed to mitigate the damage of future floods by requiring youth summer camps to implement approved disaster plans, establishing licensing requirements for local emergency managers and facilitating the development of a statewide emergency communications plan.
“We have a chance now to right these wrongs, to say ‘Never again,’” Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, said on the House floor… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Democrats alarmed over new data showing voters fleeing to GOP (The Hill)
Democrats are sounding the alarm on new data showing they are losing voters to Republicans across the country.
A devastating New York Times report Wednesday showed that of the 30 states that maintain voter registration records by political party, Democrats fell behind Republicans in all of them between the 2020 and 2024 elections.
In total, Republicans added up to 4.5 million voters compared to Democrats, creating a huge hole that could set Democrats back for years.
“I think it should be an alarm” for the party, Democratic strategist Eddie Vale. “I think it’s a real problem.”
The data comes as Democrats struggle to figure out how to get out of the political wilderness after losing the presidency to Donald Trump and control of both chambers of Congress to the GOP… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ With Fed under pressure, Jerome Powell prepares for a high-stakes speech (NPR)
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will speak Friday in what will be his final appearance as Fed chair at the high-profile, high-altitude meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
The speech comes as the central bank is under mounting pressure from the White House to lower interest rates.
Powell will address the economic outlook, three-and-a-half weeks before the Fed's next rate-setting meeting. He'll also talk about the central bank's longer-term balancing act between fighting inflation and unemployment.
The annual meeting, sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, is a chance for economists and central bankers from around the world to hike, fish and talk monetary policy in a spectacular setting at the foot of the Teton mountain range… 🟪 (READ MORE)
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