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- BG Reads // June 3, 2025
BG Reads // June 3, 2025
A.J. Bingham
June 03, 2025
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✅ Today's BG Reads include:
🕘🏛️ Today @9AM: Austin Council Work Session
And more (Read on!)
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ Today @9AM: Austin Council Session
🏛️ City Memo:
Dr. Kara Boyles has been appointed Director of Capital Delivery Services Department, effective June 3, 2025. (See PDF)
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On July 18th, 2024, Austin's City Council directed the City Manager to bring a comprehensive bond package for Austinites to approve through an election by November 2026.
The 2026 General Obligation (GO) Bond is an opportunity to invest in the future of our city, but it’s important that it reflects the priorities and needs of our community.
That’s why we’re asking for your input. Whether you attend a community meeting, fill out a survey, or engage with us online, your feedback will help shape the projects that move forward. Additionally, tell your family and friends to participate too!
We’re growing BG Reads and want to better understand who’s reading. Your quick answers help us shape content and build a stronger community.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ City to postpone UNO vote to consult with UT (Austin Monitor)
A vote on a long-debated plan to allow taller buildings and expanded development in the University Neighborhood Overlay district has been postponed until the fall, pushing back the move to add student housing capacity near the University of Texas.
The postponement request was outlined in a pair of May 30 memos from Planning Director Lauren Middleton-Pratt. It will move the Council’s consideration of the proposed zoning and land use changes from Thursday’s City Council meeting to September 25.
The delay is intended to let city staff “formally meet with the leadership of the University of Texas at Austin (UT) to understand the university’s challenges, concerns, and context that frames their issues.”
The changes under consideration would amend the city’s zoning map and Central Austin land use plan to allow greater density and building heights in West Campus, including towers up to 600 feet along Guadalupe Street and 420 feet in adjacent areas. The reforms are part of a broader effort to update the UNO district, which was originally adopted in 2004 to encourage student housing development within walking distance of campus… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ After Texas lawmakers kill reform bill, Austin ISD left scrambling to avoid state control (CBS Austin)
Austin Independent School District is racing to finalize a turnaround plan for three failing campuses, without the extra time district leaders had hoped would come from the Texas Legislature.
House Bill 4, which promised to overhaul the state’s standardized testing system and extend deadlines for improvement plans, failed to pass before the legislative session ended last week. Lawmakers in the House and Senate couldn’t agree on who should control Texas’ school rating system, effectively killing the bill in the final days of the session.
The bill, authored by Rep. Brad Buckley (R–Conroe), would have eliminated the STAAR exam in favor of shorter, more frequent tests aimed at tracking student progress. But for Austin ISD, the lifeline was in an amendment by local Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin), who proposed giving districts two years to submit state-mandated turnaround plans for struggling campuses.
“Districts who just last month got a second D or F rating for 2023 could be subject to a takeover as soon as next school year,” Talarico warned on the House floor. “A campus must be provided two years before the commissioner may take action.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ CommUnityCare announces new CEO following leadership conflict with Central Health (KUT)
CommUnityCare, a chain of clinics that serve low-income Austinites, has a new CEO after a monthslong leadership conflict with its public partner, Central Health.
With the hiring announcement, the two organizations signaled they had come to a common understanding of their complex working partnership, which some 134,000 patients in the Austin area rely on for affordable medical care.
Dr. Nicholas Yagoda served as CommUnityCare’s interim CEO for several months before accepting the permanent position at the unanimous recommendation of the CUC board of directors. He previously served as chief medical officer for the organization. He will also hold a position with Central Health as its first executive vice president of ambulatory services — a role intended to help with streamlining operations across Central Health’s various outpatient clinical offerings and partnerships.
“My dual role enforces collaboration, eliminates silos and helps us deliver seamless ambulatory care under a unified vision,” Yagoda said.
CommUnityCare clinics work with Travis County’s public hospital district Central Health to receive “federally public health center” status. That translates to better Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates and better deals on prescription drugs, allowing CUC clinics to serve patients who struggle to pay for health care… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Killeen's new economic development leader aims to leverage military base in growth push (Austin Business Journal)
During his time working in economic development and site selection, Barry Albrecht said companies looking to relocate to an area don't always look at city limits. They're more interested in things like workforce, cost, culture — and, when it comes to the defense industry that he has specialized in, security clearances.
That's why Albrecht in May took on the role of president and CEO of the Killeen Economic Development Corp. and Greater Killeen Chamber of Commerce. He replaced Scott Connell, who left for a similar post in Allen earlier this year.
Killeen is about 70 miles north of Austin and has 160,000 residents. It's mostly known as the home of U.S. army installation Fort Cavazos and for its wealth of defense contractors. Still, it also has emerged as a hub for semiconductor companies, and it has been a source of highly skilled workers for companies like Tesla Inc… 🟪 (READ MORE)
[TEXAS NEWS]
✅ The 2025 Texas Legislature is over. See how far some of the most consequential bills made it. (Texas Tribune)
Texas lawmakers filed thousands of bills during the 2025 legislative session. However, most of those bills didn’t become law. Lawmakers spent the final weeks before the session ended on June 2 trying to push through their priorities. They also tried to stop certain bills from going through by delaying votes and letting them miss key deadlines.
A number of bills are now on Gov. Greg Abbott's desk. He can either sign or veto them. Most new laws take effect Sept. 1… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Abbott's comptroller pick will shape the rollout of Texas private school vouchers (Houston Chronicle)
Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to choose a new state comptroller in the next few weeks, who will have an outsized role in the state’s rollout of private school vouchers. The next comptroller is tasked with everything from marketing the program, which gives students around $10,500 a year to put toward private education, to running the lottery to determine who gets the funds.
Glenn Hegar is stepping down from the job this month after being named chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. Abbott can appoint his replacement, and with the legislative session wrapping up, his pick will avoid a Senate confirmation battle.
The stakes will be unusually high — for Abbott and his pick. “Personnel is policy. Having the right people in the right place means you get the policy implemented in the way that you want,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “The controversy about vouchers is the potential for there to be a spiraling cost and for it to be applied in an unfair way. The governor has to put someone in place who will watch those numbers carefully.”
Abbott has yet to hint who he will choose to carry out his signature issue. The statewide position is up for election next year, and several Republicans are already campaigning for the job. They include Christi Craddick, chair of the Texas Railroad Commission, and Don Huffines, who served in the Texas Senate and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022. Many others are likely angling to run — or to catch the governor’s eye and get an early entry in the role. “It’s not the most visible of the statewide elected agencies,” said Jaime Puente, an education policy expert with Every Texan.
“But now, it’s going to be unavoidable.” Under the $1 billion statewide voucher program signed into law this spring, students will have access to state-funded education savings accounts they can put toward private school tuition, tutoring, books or homeschool costs.
The comptroller’s office will be provided $30 million and authorized to hire 28 new staffers to run the program. The agency must write the applications for parents and set the deadlines, approve vendors, contract with marketing firms to promote the program around the state, collect data about participants and audit the spending to protect against fraud… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Bill to scrap STAAR test dies in the Texas Legislature (Texas Tribune)
A legislative effort to scrap the STAAR test to respond to concerns that the test puts unnecessary pressure on students died in the last days of the legislative session.
House Bill 4, authored by state Rep. Brad Buckley, would have swapped the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness test for three shorter tests given throughout the school year.
The Senate and House failed to come out of closed-door negotiations with a compromise in time, missing a key legislative deadline this weekend.
Legislators in the House and Senate agreed that Texas schools needed to do away with the STAAR test. But in the end, the two chambers could not close the gulf over what they wanted to see out of the new test and from the A-F ratings system, which uses standardized test results to grade schools’ performance… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Legislature passes bipartisan bill to let Texas state agencies determine remote-work policies (KUT)
You can do a lot in six hours. Ask Chase Norris. Three days a week, he makes a three-hour commute up and down Interstate 35 from his Hays County home to his Austin office at the Texas General Land Office. Until this week, he was staring down a five-day commute — another six hours on the traffic-prone interstate. He wasn't thrilled. Earlier this spring Gov. Greg Abbott ordered all state workers — remote or not — back to offices.
For some agencies that sent them scrambling to find space for workers who, in some cases, had been fully remote. But last week, state lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill to effectively reverse that top-down mandate, allowing state agencies to set their own remote-work policies. The bill now heads to the governor's desk. The measure from Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione allows agencies to adopt their own remote-work policies, while setting up guardrails for agency heads to ensure employees' productivity.
Catarina Kissinger, an organizer with the Texas State Employees Union, said the need to regulate remote-work wasn't on a lot of people's list of priorities heading into the legislative session. But the governor's March mandate changed that. "It's one of those things that feels like it shouldn't be necessary," she said. "But it was made necessary by the governor's mandate, unfortunately." Kissinger said the order ran counter to a state-backed study that remote work policies were a boon to agencies that had been struggling to hire and retain workers.
"Remote work is one of the few tools that actually improves job satisfaction without raising costs," Kissinger said. Norris said the governor's policy caused a lot of stress with no real benefit" among his coworkers, with some weighing whether to quit outright and move to the private sector.
"[This] work is hard," he said. "It doesn't pay that much, but we do it because it's good work." After the bill's passage, Norris said the General Land Office paused its transition to a five-day, in-person transition plan. He's still going to have to make a long commute down I-35, but now it's only three days a week, not five. He and his wife both work full-time and those three-hour stretches of time on I-35 can take a toll.
"It's hard enough balancing all of life these days," he said. "The two days I work from home help me do that. I don't sacrifice my productivity to do that. It's just the nature of the beast." The bill now heads to the governor's desk, and Kissinger said its overwhelming bipartisan support in both the Texas House and Senate could bode well for the measure. "[We] would be pretty surprised if he didn't actually sign it," he said... 🟪 (READ MORE)
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