BG Note | News - What We're Reading (October 20, 2017)
[Austin Metro]
Council continues to wait on new lobbying rules (Austin Monitor) LINK TO STORY
On Thursday, Council Member Leslie Pool, who has been leading efforts to make changes to the city’s Anti-Lobbying Ordinance, told her colleagues that stakeholders are close to reaching an agreement over new rules.
“We’re achieving really good progress,” she said.
City Council voted in April to waive the Anti-Lobbying Ordinance for waste contracts, with the intent of exempting them from the rules until Council could craft changes to the ordinance, which the city’s largest waste hauler, Texas Disposal Systems, has criticized as unfair.
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BG Advisor Note | TDS Wants Its Cake and Austin's Too (Andy Cates) LINK TO STORY
Planning Commission quartet revolts against calls for CodeNEXT delay
(Austin Monitor) LINK TO STORY
In an unconventional maneuver, four Planning Commissioners hosted an impromptu press conference Thursday at City Hall, announcing their opposition to voices critical of the CodeNEXT timeline.
Commissioners Chito Vela, Greg Anderson, Jeffrey Thompson and Angela De Hoyos Hart all made statements urging the city to proceed as planned on the current draft schedule. The land use commissions must submit their formal comments by Oct. 31 for consideration in the third and final draft of CodeNEXT, and they will have until the middle of January to make their final recommendations to City Council, which is supposed to make the decision to adopt by April.
Proposal to change traffic rule draws fire (Austin Monitor) LINK TO STORY
The Austin Transportation Department is proposing changes to the Traffic Impact Analysis for zoning cases that observers in the development business worry could slow down the process and raise the cost of developing small commercial projects.
Transportation Department Assistant Director Annick Beaudet told City Council during Tuesday’s work session that the proposed new threshold for requiring a TIA would be 1,000 vehicle trips per day, rather than the current number of 2,000.
Beaudet said the department was also proposing to change the name to Transportation Impact Analysis, reflecting the fact that TIAs “will provide analysis for all modes of transportation.”
[TEXAS]
Dallas Fed CEO: Technology, not trade or immigration, is main reason for job loss (Texas Tribune) LINK TO STORY
If policymakers and elected officials keep buying into the misnomer that trade and immigration are the keys to job loss, the state’s and country’s leaders are going to craft policies that hinder growth and prosperity, the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas told business leaders in San Antonio.
“A lot of these job dislocations are being publicly blamed on trade and immigration. Our analysis at the Dallas Fed is 15 years ago, maybe. Today, no,” Robert Kaplan told members of the Texas Business Leadership Council. “More likely, if your job is being disrupted it’s because of technology.”
A&M, UT competing against each other to run Los Alamos weapons lab (Austin American-Statesman) LINK TO STORY
Texas A&M University System regents voted unanimously Thursday to authorize the system to compete for a contract to run Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the nation’s nuclear arsenal and part of the portfolio overseen by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, a graduate of A&M.
The action by the A&M System Board of Regents came exactly a month after University of Texas System regents authorized their system to spend up to $4.5 million to prepare a bid to operate Los Alamos.