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- BG Reads // October 31, 2025
BG Reads // October 31, 2025
A.J. Bingham
October 31, 2025
faustin a
Presented By
www.binghamgp.com
October 31, 2025
✅ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Government shutdown tests short-staffed control tower at Austin's airport (KUT)
🟪 Austin and Houston both have budget problems. They are approaching them very differently (Texas Standard)
🟪 Muny golf course preservation efforts in Austin extended another 2 years (Community Impact)
🟪 Austin’s youth homelessness has quadrupled since 2020; how the city plans to reduce it (KXAN)
🟪 Gov. Greg Abbott under pressure to use emergency funds for looming SNAP crisis (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Texas freezes program to help minority-owned businesses (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Spiraling effects of the shutdown leave lawmakers grasping for ways to end it (Associated Press)
🟪 China’s Xi promises to protect free trade at APEC as Trump snubs major summit (Associated Press)
READ ON!
[FIRM NEWS]
Bingham Group is proud to announce the launch of our Land Use & Entitlements Practice, expanding our ability to support clients navigating policy, development and permitting challenges across Central Texas.
The practice is anchored by Senior Consultant Anaiah Johnson, who brings two decades of land development and urban planning experience, including senior leadership at the City of Austin’s Development Services Department and private-sector entitlement management for one of the nation’s largest homebuilders.
For nearly nine years, Bingham Group has represented clients ranging from Central Texas–based firms to national and international companies before municipal governments in the region.
With this new practice, we now provide integrated support across both the political and technical aspects of moving land use policy and development projects forward.
Learn more about Bingham Group’s new practice — and review all of our services here: binghamgp.com/services
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart
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[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ Government shutdown tests short-staffed control tower at Austin's airport (KUT)
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has so far dodged the worst of flight delays caused by the federal government shutdown, even though travelers may still face long waits if destination airports are coping with understaffed control towers.
But veterans of air traffic control warn the relative calm may not last, with controllers in Austin's chronically short-staffed tower now facing new tests of their financial and psychological endurance.
Austin's tower is operating with about half as many controllers as recommended by targets set by the Federal Aviation Administration and the controllers' union. Controllers have been toiling for months under mandatory overtime rules, rotating through mornings, afternoons and overnight shifts six days a week.
This week was the first time since the government shutdown began Oct. 1 that those controllers received nothing on their bi-weekly paychecks… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Austin and Houston both have budget problems. They are approaching them very differently (Texas Standard)
In August, the Austin City Council passed a $6.3 billion budget, which is contingent on a controversial 20% property tax increase that’s pending voter approval: Proposition Q on the November ballot.
Houston is also facing budget problems, but Mayor John Whitmire has been on a no-new-taxes crusade.
Chaya Tong, who reports for Austin American-Statesman, said both Austin and Houston are big liberal cities that are facing restraints based on the property tax limit passed by the state Legislature in 2019.
“[The limit] says that local entities have to put tax rate increases to a vote if they are more than 3.5%,” she said. “And we’re seeing that come into play this year, kind of for the first time really in Texas, now that COVID relief money is drying up and local governments are looking for how they’re going to get their next influx of spending.”
According to Tong, Houston has a $330 million budget shortfall. Meanwhile, Austin is hoping to add more city services through Proposition Q without pulling from reserves or going into what had originally been projected as a $33.4 million deficit… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Austin’s youth homelessness has quadrupled since 2020; how the city plans to reduce it (KXAN)
The city of Austin and other local leaders announced a new plan aimed at preventing young people who exit foster care from becoming homeless – an effort officials describe as an effort to “dismantle the foster care to homelessness pipeline.”
In a recent study from the University of Texas at Austin, researchers found that one-third of young Texans who are impacted by the child welfare system become homeless by 21. In Austin, officials report the number of young adults at risk of homelessness has quadrupled since 2022, from around 250 to 1,171.
“Tonight, there are 1171 young people who do not know where they are going to be sleeping,” said Liz Schoenfeld, the CEO of LifeWorks, a youth homelessness organization. “Unless we act, the number of young people in our community who are expected to experience homelessness is expected to double within the next five years.” … 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Muny golf course preservation efforts in Austin extended another 2 years (Community Impact)
A decision on the preservation of Lions Municipal Golf Course, or Muny, was given yet another extension amid years of debate over the property by Austin, The University of Texas and local stakeholders.
For decades, the city has leased the UT-owned golf course for public recreation. The popular spot is nationally recognized as one of the South’s first desegregated golf courses, but its future has remained uncertain as Austin and UT have sought to reach a deal over the site’s use or possible sale.
Austin continues to lease Muny from the university for less than $500,000 annually to operate as a public golf course. But UT previously signaled intentions to redevelop some or all of the property that's now appraised at more than $680 million, and is one of several it owns in Austin under an early 1900s land gift requiring the sites to benefit the university.
Muny’s high price tag likely puts it out of reach of an outright purchase by the city or through private conservation efforts led by local golf figures and advocates. And 2021 civic rezoning of UT’s tracts to set standards for possible future development, prompted by a stalemate with Austin over how the university could use its land, ended up stalling out. The course’s outlook has also drawn attention at the state level… 🟪 (READ MORE)
[TEXAS/US NEWS]
✅ Gov. Greg Abbott under pressure to use emergency funds for looming SNAP crisis (Texas Tribune)
With the federal government at a standstill and some red states offering up money for food assistance, Gov. Greg Abbott faces pressure to authorize the release of emergency state funding — a move he has done before — to offset the looming federal suspension of SNAP benefits this weekend for 3.5 million low-income Texans.
Some Democratic and Republican state leaders have freed up money for food banks or to continue their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also called food stamps, in November, after the ongoing government shutdown has caused federal funding for the program to run dry. Some governors declared states of emergency, which Abbott has done in the past to release funding during COVID-19, the Uvalde shooting, and for border operations… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Texas freezes program to help minority-owned businesses (Texas Tribune)
The state program intended to give additional exposure to businesses owned by women, minorities and disabled veterans seeking state contracts was frozen by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts’ office this week, the latest instance of Republican state officials targeting a program perceived as promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
Information regarding the Historically Underutilized Business program was removed from the comptroller’s website and the office said it was pausing the issuance of all new and renewed certifications for state procurement, according to a statement by the comptroller’s office.
The office said it was freezing the program to allow for a review to ensure it is constitutional and complies with Gov. Greg Abbott’s January executive order banning DEI programs from state agencies… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ China’s Xi promises to protect free trade at APEC as Trump snubs major summit (Associated Press)
Chinese leader Xi Jinping told Asia-Pacific leaders on Friday that his country would help to defend global free trade at an annual economic regional forum snubbed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Xi took center stage at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that began Friday in the South Korean city of Gyeongju, as Trump left the country a day earlier after reaching deals with Xi meant to ease their escalating trade war.
This year’s two-day APEC summit has been heavily overshadowed by the Trump-Xi meeting that was arranged on the sidelines.
Trump described his Thursday meeting with Xi as a roaring success, saying he would cut tariffs on China, while Beijing had agreed to allow the export of rare earth elements and start buying American soybeans. Their deals were a relief to a world economy rattled by trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
Trump’s decision to skip APEC fits with his well-known disdain for big, multi-nation forums that have been traditionally used to address global problems. But his blunt dismissal of APEC risks worsening America’s reputation at a forum that represents nearly 40% of the world’s population and more than half of global goods trade… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Spiraling effects of the shutdown leave lawmakers grasping for ways to end it (Associated Press)
Certain senators know it. House Speaker Mike Johnson knows it. And with President Donald Trump back in Washington from his overseas trip, perhaps the White House knows it, too.
For many, it’s time for the government shutdown to come to an end.
From coast to coast, fallout from the dysfunction of a shuttered federal government is hitting home: Alaskans are stockpiling moose, caribou and fish for winter, even before SNAP food aid is scheduled to shut off. Mainers are filling up their home-heating oil tanks, but waiting on the federal subsidies that are nowhere in sight.
Flights are being delayed with holiday travel around the corner. Workers are going without paychecks. And Americans are getting a first glimpse of the skyrocketing health care insurance costs that are at the center of the stalemate on Capitol Hill.
“People are stressing,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as food options in her state grow scarce… 🟪 (READ MORE)
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