BG Reads | News You Need to Know (November 27, 2019)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW -> Episode 63: The Future of Texas Hemp Farming with Robert Head, CEO, Blue Cord Farms (LINK TO SHOW)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Proposed partnership with ECHO would convert more motels to temporarily house Austin’s homeless (KUT)
ECHO, the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, says the addition of 200-300 short-term motel units would substantially impact the community of Austinites living without shelter. In a memo sent Tuesday to the mayor and City Council, city staff said they agree.
Earlier this month, council approved buying the Rodeway Inn in South Austin and converting the units into temporary housing for people – without preconditions like mandatory case management or substance abuse treatment.
But that motel can house only 87 people. The latest Point-in-Time count of homeless Austinites found more than 1,000 unsheltered people across the city. So, the Rodeway Inn purchase would just be a band-aid for a much bigger problem.
In the proposed partnership with ECHO, the City of Austin would buy functioning and operational motels to make rooms immediately available to house people. ECHO would secure funding to pay for operational costs like staffing, security and on-site services.
The partnership would focus on creating housing units that allow the three P's – partners, pets and possessions. The city says these three things are often the reason people won’t go to a shelter… (LINK TO STORY)
Paxton files suit against planning commissioners (Austin Monitor)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is once again challenging the makeup of Austin’s Planning Commission.
In a suit filed Tuesday, Paxton asks to remove Fayez Kazi, James Shieh, Greg Anderson, Claire Hempel and/or Patrick Howard from the Planning Commission “because one or more of them unlawfully hold a position on the Commission.”
The suit is a retread of a 2018 suit from Paxton. That suit was resolved when the number of people on the original petition dropped below the one-third requirement. But with the appointment of Howard and Hempel, it was thought to be only a matter of time before the challenge would continue… (LINK TO STORY)
Demolition permitting revision to get going in 2020 (Austin Monitor)
The Development Services Department is behind schedule in its effort to revise the city’s demolition permitting process.
The department issued a report with nine recommendations for a new process in October 2018. At the time, the department expected to bring its proposed amendments to City Council for implementation in spring 2019, but that timeline has fallen through.
A Nov. 19 memorandum posted by Denise Lucas, director of Development Services, states that the project teams tasked with advancing the recommendations “discovered complexities … that increased the scope of work required” to achieve the desired outcomes.
As a result, only one of the recommendations has been implemented so far. In November 2018, the department took over commercial demolition permitting from the Historic Preservation Office, meeting the goal of consolidating residential and commercial demolition permitting into one place… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Some Farmers Are Going All In On Hemp. But Could It Be The Next Emu? (Texas Standard)
Not every crop could compel farmers to pay $50 to spend a chilly weekday in a drab conference room in Wichita Falls. But hemp is not every crop.
There’s barely a seat available for the conference, which features economists, lawyers and agronomists all sharing what they know about marijuana’s non-psychoactive cousin.
The potential for profit has driven them here. As CBD products have become ubiquitous, the value of hemp has skyrocketed. In states where it’s been legal to grow for years, some farmers report profiting thousands of dollars per acre. By comparison, a good cotton crop brings in between $100 and $200 per acre… (LINK TO STORY)
Read also:
In the Weeds: Hemp legislation updates from USDA and State of Texas (BG Blog)
As experienced Texas congressmen retire, will the state's sway in Congress decline? (Texas Tribune)
U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, was in Congress for over a decade before she narrowly won a bid to become the top Republican on the powerful House Appropriations Committee last year.
That's about how long it takes to achieve a position like that, especially on the committee that decides government spending. Her placement there was a big win for Texas Republicans in the House, giving one of their own a considerable amount of clout.
But the number of Texans in Congress with Granger's experience has been shrinking dramatically in recent years. This year, six of Granger's GOP colleagues from Texas, including five who would have had at least a decade of experience if they'd remained in their seats past the next election, announced retirement plans — a run for the exits that Democrats termed the "Texodus."… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
Dallas Fed President: Deglobalization is reducing U.S. economic productivity (Dallas Morning News)
The U.S. economy is forecast to grow at a slower pace in 2020, due primarily to trade uncertainties but not solely because of the trade war with China, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan said in a CNBC appearance Tuesday morning. “We’ve got some structural issues that are not going away,” Kaplan told CNBC’s Steve Leisman. “Aging demographics, aging workforce which means slowing workforce growth.”
In Texas and beyond, the economy has had to deal with a tightening labor force that economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas have grown concerned about over recent months. The state’s unemployment rate has held at a historic low of 3.4% for five straight months. Kaplan also laid out how he believes Trump’s trade war with China has caused companies to slow the rate at which they’re investing in future growth. “Weak manufacturing, weak global growth, weak business investment all relate to uncertainty regarding trade,” he said… (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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