BG Reads // August 4, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
August 04, 2025

Presented By

www.binghamgp.com

August 4, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 The Week Ahead in City of Austin public meetings

🟪 Council approves maximum tax rate increase in preparation for possible election (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Texas House Democrats flee the state in bid to block GOP’s proposed congressional map (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Gov. Greg Abbott threatens Texas House Democrats with removal from office for fleeing state (Texas Tribune)

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ Memos:

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

CMO Executives and Advisors_July 2025.pdf519.20 KB • PDF File

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Council approves maximum tax rate increase in preparation for possible election (Austin Monitor)

At a public hearing Thursday, City Council took the first step toward a possible tax rate election on the November ballot in order to plug Austin’s $33 million deficit and fund the proposed $6.3 million budget, setting the maximum Council can ask voters to increase their property taxes at 8 cents, or an extra $421 annually for the average homeowner. The current proposed budget already includes a 3.5 percent increase, which is the limit the state has set for cities to be able to collect. Anything more will require a tax rate election.

The state legislature and rampant federal funding cuts since Trump took office have contributed to the city’s shortfall, but so has unpredictably low sales tax revenue, and the last of the American Rescue Plan Act pandemic relief funding running out. To plug the gap on the high end, a 7 percent tax rate increase – which at least six Council Members have expressed support for – would raise the average homeowner’s taxes by about $200 or more annually. On the low end, Council Member Marc Duchen is fully opposed to any tax rate election (TRE), while Mayor Kirk Watson has come down on the side of a 3.5 percent increase over the proposed budget, outlining a spending plan on the Council message board over the weekend.

If there were no election, Austin would be looking at major shortfalls and extreme gaps in services across the board. City leaders are already considering cutting firefighter staffing below national standards; Austin Public Library’s used bookstore Recycled Reads could close; and Austin Public Health has lost more than $15 million in federal grants since Trump took office, which staff has warned will curtail immunization capabilities. The Trump administration’s role in Austin’s financial woes was a focal point of the conversation on Thursday, as well as the state’s continuing push to constrict local power. Indeed, over at the state capitol on the same day, the legislature was considering cutting cities’ ability to raise taxes even more, lowering the cap to 2.5 percent on Texas cities with more than 75,000 residents… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

[TEXAS/US NEWS]


✅ Texas House Democrats flee the state in bid to block GOP’s proposed congressional map (Texas Tribune)

Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state Sunday in a bid to block passage of a new congressional map designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House next year, raising the stakes in what's poised to be a national fight over redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm election.

The maneuver, undertaken by most of the Texas House’s 62 Democrats, deprives the Republican-controlled chamber of a quorum — the number of lawmakers needed to function under House rules — ahead of a scheduled Monday vote on the draft map. The 150-member House can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning the absence of 51 or more Democrats can bring the Legislature’s ongoing special session to a halt.

“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement, in which he accused Gov. Greg Abbott of “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal.”

Most House Democrats left Texas Sunday afternoon en route to the Chicago area. Some also headed to New York to meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has condemned Texas’ mid-decade redistricting effort and entertained the idea of retaliating with new maps in her state. A third contingent of lawmakers departed for Boston to attend the National Conference of State Legislatures' annual legislative summit, alongside some Senate Democrats, according to a source familiar with the senators’ plans… 🟪 (READ MORE)


✅ Gov. Greg Abbott threatens Texas House Democrats with removal from office for fleeing state (Texas Tribune)

Gov. Greg Abbott informed Texas House Democrats late Sunday that he would attempt to have them removed from office if they do not return to Austin to pass the GOP’s proposed new congressional maps.

The Republican governor’s late-night missive came after more than 50 Democrats left the state Sunday afternoon so the Texas House would not have a quorum — the number of lawmakers needed to consider and pass legislation under chamber rules — aiming to grind all legislative activity to a halt for the remainder of the special session, slated to end later this month They are hoping to stop the passage of a new congressional map, drawn at the direction of President Donald Trump, that could net five additional seats for Republicans in the 2026 midterms.

“This truancy ends now,” Abbott said in a letter sent to each of the departed members. “The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the House reconvenes at 3:00 PM on Monday, August 4, 2025.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)


✅ Supreme Court to consider ban on race-based voting districts (Bloomberg)

The US Supreme Court indicated it will consider outlawing the use of race in drawing voting maps, setting up a blockbuster showdown with implications for dozens of congressional districts with predominantly minority populations. Expanding a Louisiana case already on their docket, the justices on Friday said they will consider arguments that the 1965 Voting Rights Act no longer provides a legitimate basis for map-drawers to intentionally create majority-Black or majority-Hispanic districts. The clash could also upend state and local legislative districts, giving it the potential to have a seismic impact on elections at every level of the US system.

The US House had 11 majority-Black and 31 majority-Hispanic districts for the 2022 election, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of the most recent American Community Survey data. The showdown comes at an already tumultuous time for congressional maps. Texas Republicans are pushing to redraw their lines in an unusual mid-decade redistricting to create three to five new GOP seats.

Democrats in California and New York have said they will seek to reopen their districts in response. Those efforts could determine whether Democrats retake control of the House, giving them the ability to stall President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda and use the subpoena power to aggressively investigate his administration. The Supreme Court for decades has interpreted the Voting Rights Act to require the creation of heavily Black or Hispanic voting districts in many circumstances.

The landmark law was passed to prevent obstacles Black Americans in the South faced to voting, such as poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidation. The court’s conservatives have questioned whether that practice remains constitutionally justified by current conditions. Critics contend the Voting Rights Act is still relying on factual findings from 1982, though Congress re-authorized the law in 2006. The court was originally scheduled to resolve the Louisiana case in the nine-month term that ended in late June. But in an unusual move, the justices instead said on June 27 they would hear a new round of arguments and potentially add other legal issues to the mix.

The high court’s order Friday said the justices will consider whether the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana violated the US Constitution. The order also pointed to arguments made by challengers to the district in a court filing last year. “The authority to conduct race-based cannot extend indefinitely into the future,” the challengers argued in that brief, quoting from a 2023 opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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