BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 10, 2019)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW -> Episode 64: United States-Mexico policy and investment talk with Sergio Chavez, Intermestic Partners (LINK TO SHOW)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Delia Garza files for Travis County attorney race, will finish term as Austin Mayor Pro Tem (Community Impact)
Austin Mayor Pro Tem Delia Garza filed her candidacy paperwork Dec. 9 to run for Travis County attorney as a Democrat.
Garza, the first Latina to serve as the city's mayor pro tem, announced she would not seek re-election to her District 2 seat on Nov. 12, fueling speculation that she would announce a run for county attorney.
Because Garza filed for the March 2020 primary elections in December, she will be able to serve the rest of her term on City Council. If she had filed earlier—less than one year and 30 days before her term expires at the end of 2020—she would have had to vacate her seat representing the Southeast Austin district, prompting a special election in May to find a replacement.
A majority of City Council members have said they will support her campaign.
Garza will vie against Mike Denton, a Travis County court-at-law judge who retired from the bench in August; Laurie Eiserloh, an assistant county attorney; and Dominic Selvera, a criminal defense attorney… (LINK TO STORY)See also: Episode 59: Land Development Code Draft 1 with Mayor Pro Tem Delia Garza
Council sets off on long journey to code adoption (Austin Monitor)
City Council took its first go at a first reading of the draft Land Development Code on Monday. Due both to the scope of the issue and scheduling conflicts, that attempt will now be spread out over today and Wednesday, but Council members managed to get through most of the amendments directly related to residential zones, transition areas and Imagine Austin activity centers and corridors.
That leaves the affordable housing, non-zoning, process, and programmatic amendments to be taken up starting today at 9 a.m.
Tensions rose early Monday over the value of going back and forth on amendments that may or may not have the support on the dais to be included. And indeed, a number of amendments failed in the end. In many other cases, though, Council members were able to get clarity over their concerns and find compromise. (LINK TO STORY)
Chief Equity Officer Calls Austin ISD's School Closure Process Inequitable And 'Short-Sighted' (KUT)
School closures and consolidations are not "equity strategies," the Austin Independent School District's chief equity officer says in a report released Monday.
"They are short-term and often short-sighted approaches to cost savings that are seldom reinvested in programming in the very school communities that are displaced and dispossessed," Stephanie Hawley continues.
The report was dated Nov. 14 – five days before the vote to close four schools last month.
Hawley says the short timeline, lack of transparency in how schools were chosen and the lack of involvement with the community to develop a plan didn't follow equity guidelines. She suggests the district do a system-wide equity audit, create a more aggressive strategy for increasing enrollment, and adjust boundaries before closing schools… (LINK TO STORY)
Stratus sells Austin block that’s home to W Hotel (Austin American-Statesman)
Stratus Properties Inc. said Monday it has reached a deal to sell the downtown block that houses the W Austin Hotel to Nashville-based Ryman Hospitality Properties.
In addition to the W hotel, the property is home to Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater, as well retail and office space and the 3TEN ACL Live entertainment venue and business.
Austin-based Stratus said Ryman will pay $275 million for the property, which is bounded by Second, Third, Lavaca and Guadalupe streets. The price includes the purchaser’s assumption of about $142 million of existing mortgage debt. The remainder of the purchase price will be paid in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020.
Stratus CEO Beau Armstrong said the decision to sell the property, which opened in 2010, fits into Stratus’ development strategy.
“Our business model is really to take the development risk and the entitlement risk and then once an asset is stabilized and leased, we generally try to sell it and then do it again,” he said… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texans on southern border vow to fight Trump's efforts to take their homes for border wall (Washington Post)
Salvador Castillo was yearning for tranquility when he became enchanted by a one-acre homestead close - but not too close - to the city, a place where cows graze beneath whispering mesquite trees on the property's edge. They never imagined a border wall could dissect their property someday. But the first letter, stamped with an official government seal, arrived about a year ago. Their neighbors, the Carrascos and Trevinos, got them too. The United States wanted permission to enter and survey their land - three homes targeted in two neighboring U-shaped Texas subdivisions - in preparation for construction of the Trump administration's new border wall system.
President Donald Trump aims to build 166 miles of border barrier in Texas, almost all of it slated to go on private land that the government has yet to acquire - thousands of parcels along the river, an unknown number of them occupied by their owners, including churches and single-family homes. No new border wall has been built on private land in Texas since the president took office, but land acquisition in the Rio Grande Valley is about to enter a new phase this week, as U.S. attorneys began filing initial petitions in court while making cash offers to property owners, according to Justice Department officials with knowledge of the process. On Friday, the federal government filed its first land acquisition case to condemn nearly 13 acres of private property in the Rio Grande Valley, a parcel near the river levee in Hidalgo County. The owner was offered $93,449 in compensation for the land… (LINK TO STORY)
Ahead of 2020, voting group warns most county election websites in Texas are not secure (KUT)
Almost 80 percent of county election websites in Texas are not secure ahead of the 2020 presidential primary, according to a report from the League of Women Voters of Texas. Before every major election, the nonpartisan voting group says, it looks through the state’s 254 county election websites to make sure they have the information they are legally required to have, that the information is easy to find and that it’s easy to read. League of Women Voters of Texas President Grace Chimene said as the group conducted this review, it found a glaring issue.
“One of things that stood out to us is that there is a definite problem with website security,” she said. “I was really surprised. I was totally shocked that this is a problem.” In particular, Chimene said, 201 of the 254 sites don’t have https in their URLs, signaling the website is secure. “This is just the most simple thing to fix and it hasn’t been fixed,” she said. The overwhelming majority of sites also didn't have a .gov address, indicating they are government-verified domains. Chimene said only nine counties in the state have a .gov address. “Voters need to know that when they land on a website that it is actually the correct website,” she said. “Right now we have websites that are .net, .org, .com, and it’s really hard to tell whether it’s an actual website by the government or if it’s another website by perhaps some other organization that doesn’t have good purposes and wants to lead voters astray.”… (LINK TO STORY)
Optimism abounds for Texas Democrats in 2020, but campaign staffers are sparse (Texas Tribune)
Though the news broke last week from Baltimore, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris’ withdrawal from the presidential campaign reverberated all the way to Texas.
Harris made a few inroads in the state. But most prominently, she hired over the last few years a stable of female operatives with Texas roots. And one particular woman was on the mind of a number of Texas Democrats, now that she was without a campaign.
"What's Emmy going to do next?" was the question bouncing around Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston on Tuesday, referring to Emmy Ruiz, an Austin-based Democratic field organizer who was one of the most sought-after campaign consultants this cycle… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Democrats to unveil 2 articles of impeachment Tuesday morning (Politico)
House Democrats plan to unveil two articles of impeachment Tuesday, charging President Donald Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, according to multiple lawmakers and aides.
The Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the articles on Thursday, setting up a vote on the House floor next week to make Trump the third president in history to be impeached. The markup will be the last major step before the House votes to formally impeach Trump… (LINK TO STORY)
White House, Democrats edge closer to deal on trade (The Hill)
President Trump and House Democrats appear to be closing in on a deal to approve a new North American trade agreement, which would set up a major legislative victory for both sides.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka briefed his labor confederation’s executive committee on the emerging deal Monday, while U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner were reportedly set to travel to Mexico.
The trip suggests a last-minute move by Kushner and Lighthizer to get a final stamp of approval on the deal from Mexico… (LINK TO STORY)
The Bingham Group, LLC is an Austin-based full service lobbying firm representing and advising clients on municipal, legislative, and regulatory matters throughout Texas.
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