BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 4, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
The BG Podcast returns tomorrow with Episode 101 featuring José Garza, Democratic nominee for Travis County District Attorney. I
In the meantime, check out one our top shows, Episode 74:Austin Public-Private-Partnerships with John Rosato, Southwest Strategies Group (SHOW LINK)
Note: Show also available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Sound Cloud, and Stitcher
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin teachers union demands no in-class school until mid-November, Abbott says educators should have no safety concerns (KXAN)
Education Austin, the labor union representing teachers and other employees in the Austin Independent School District, published a list of demands for AISD leadership before the proposed school year begins Aug. 18.
The union does not want school to start until Sept. 8, and it does not want any in-person teaching until at least mid-November.
“We need to stop the return of on-campus learning until public health data shows it is safe for students, families, teachers, and school employees,” the union wrote in support of its petition on Sunday night… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Staff memo spells out options, tight time frame for Council’s push for active transit bond (Austin Monitor)
City staff members have expressed concern to City Council over direction to put together a bond proposal for the November election that would look to generate $750 million to fund sidewalks, trails and other “active transportation” improvements.
Last week Council approved on consent a resolution directing the city manager to give Council a plan to fund projects spelled out in the city’s Strategic Mobility Plan, including options for initiating a separate bond vote as part of the tax rate election that will decide the multibillion-dollar Project Connect transit plan.
In a memo issued the day after the resolution’s passage, Assistant City Manager Gina Fiandaca said staffers will focus primarily on the bond election option because of the short time frame to assemble all the relevant documents and plans in time. The election is three months away.
Throughout the memo Fiandaca stresses that staffers have an “extremely short turnaround time” to prepare the bond proposal. She also notes that there would be no time for a normal round of community engagement related to the components of the proposal, though there was public input conducted during the creation of the mobility plan.
“It is important to note that city staff has not engaged the community regarding a potential transportation investment for voters to consider this year, outside of Project Connect and our normal project development process,” the memo reads. “We understand that the item by Council is in direct response to a petition and input from the larger active transportation advocacy community, but staff has not directly engaged the larger community on active transportation elements for a potential bond.”… (FULL STORY HERE)
UT warns donors, contacts possibly affected by May ransomware attack (Austin American-Statesman)
The University of Texas officials recently learned of a security breach that affected some of the school’s donors and fundraising contacts, university officials said Monday.
Blackbaud, a company that provides fundraising software to nonprofits, universities and other organizations, was the target of a ransomware attack in May, according to a post on the university’s website.
Last week, the BBC reported that multiple universities and organizations based in the United Kingdom and North America were affected by the cyberattack.
In ransomware attacks, the information and data of a target system is encrypted by an unauthorized party in a way that blocks access to the system until a ransom is paid.
University of Texas officials said some of its donors and contacts were told about the breach on Monday, and informed them that their information could have been accessed because of the cyberattack.
“Publicly available information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, emails and birthdays may have been accessed,” university officials said in the memo, “No credit card information, bank information, or social security numbers were accessed by the cybercriminal or compromised.”Historically Black colleges and universities have an extra factor to consider as they plan on how to operate this next school year: Black communities are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
According to the COVID Racial Data Tracker, Black people are dying from the coronavirus at two and a half times the rate of white people.
Colette Pierce Burnette is the president of Huston-Tillotson University, a small, private HBCU in Austin, Texas. She recently announced that the school's 1,100 students will not be returning in the fall, but that all classes will be online.
"We must have looked at over a dozen different scenarios — from being fully online to being fully on ground here on campus," she tells All Things Considered. "The students' health, the safety of our faculty, our staff, the people who work here, was paramount."… (FULL STORY HERE)
[TEXAS]
Joe Biden's campaign names first Texas hires for general election (Texas Tribune)
Joe Biden's campaign is naming its first hires for the general election in Texas, where polls continue to show a close contest between the presumptive Democratic nominee and President Donald Trump.
Biden's state director will be Rebecca Acuña, a veteran of the Texas Capitol and Democratic campaigns in the state. The deputy state director will be Jennifer Longoria, who led Elizabeth Warren's campaign in Texas during the primary. Biden's communications director in the state will be Tariq Thowfeek, a former Texas Democratic Party spokesman who has since worked for Facebook.
The team also includes two advisers who were involved early with Biden's campaign in Texas during the primary. Mike Collier, the 2018 nominee for lieutenant governor, will serve as senior adviser, while Jane Hamilton, Biden's Texas state director during the primary, has been named strategic adviser… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Court case could reveal unprecedented insight into dark money group Empower Texans (Houston Chronicle)
Empower Texans, the deep-pocketed conservative advocacy group, is well-known for its heavy hand in steering the Texas GOP further to the right and for its shadowy setup that hides its funding sources from the public. But a court case seeking to force the group’s leader to register as a lobbyist could reveal more about the inner workings of the organization — and others like it in Texas — than ever known before, after the Texas Supreme Court last month ruled that it must divulge communications and financial records to the state ethics commission. Empower Texans CEO Michael Quinn Sullivan, through his dark money group — made up of a web of political action committees and of nonprofits that aren’t required to report donors — has made $9.5 million in political contributions since 2007, state records show.
All the while, Sullivan has been able to keep secret even basic information such as his own compensation, which a Hearst Newspapers analysis found was hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the salary reported on tax forms. While many dark money groups exist in Texas, Empower Texans is by far the most visible and high-profile, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. The tea party-aligned group, chaired by Midland oilman Tim Dunn and created in 2006, has served as the “kingmaker for many Republicans in very conservative areas,” supporting and recruiting candidates to challenge sitting Republicans in primary elections. Its political action committee is mostly funded by a small group of billionaires and multimillionaires like Dunn. The group also publishes the Texas Scorecard, which each legislative session ranks lawmakers based on their adherence its so-called “fiscal responsibility index,” as well as a blog and newsletter by the same name. The lowest-ranked Republicans tend to be at the highest risk of facing primary opposition… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Masayoshi Son talks WeWork, Vision Fund and Softbank under siege (Forbes)
With a Flurry of slammed black SUV doors, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and his entourage duck into the hush-hush private space within America’s top seafood restaurant, Le Bernardin, the Japanese billionaire easy to mark by the metallic-gray Uniqlo down jacket he wears over his suit.
The man known simply as Masa has gathered around twenty of the world’s largest asset managers in Midtown Manhattan on this day in early March. He hands over a colorful tote bag he’s using instead of a briefcase and assumes the empty chair at the dead center of one side of a large three-sided table. The day before, he’d spoken to a larger group of investors, but he’s billing this morning as an exclusive “Pre-IPO Summit,” and he’s drawn a multitrillion-dollar audience, including BlackRock’s Larry Fink, who sits next to him… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Wall Street is torn on whether a Biden win brings joy or misery (Bloomberg)
As President Donald Trump’s poll numbers continue to sink, Wall Street is starting to envision Washington under Joe Biden -- a scenario that many executives say they welcome. But to some pessimists, the upbeat view underestimates the rising influence of progressive Democrats who are demanding a clampdown on banks, hedge funds and private-equity firms.
Those with the rosier outlook point to Biden’s mostly pro-business inner circle, his significant campaign contributions from the financial industry and his longtime support of credit card companies located in his home state of Delaware. Plus, a Biden victory would likely be driven by U.S. voters seeking change because they believe the country is a mess. Wall Street thinks it has a strong argument to make that reining in lenders would be a fatal mistake when unemployment is sky-high and the economy remains ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. The enthusiasm, however, is tempered by fears over how much sway Biden will give progressives and their firebrand leaders, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. That’s especially true when it comes to picking appointees to run the powerful agencies that police banks and securities firms, jobs that the activists are mobilizing to fill with industry critics. At a minimum, progressives want to ensure that the days are long over when Democrats appointed officials like Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who is a key Biden adviser. The stakes for Wall Street couldn’t be higher. Centrist regulators would be less likely to overturn rule rollbacks approved under Trump that have saved financial firms tens of billions of dollars. Progressive agency heads, on the other hand, could pursue what the C-suite calls the “shame and investigation agenda.” Policies like taxes on trading, curbs on executive pay and even breaking up behemoth banks would be back on the table… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Democrats want Biden to debate Trump despite risks (The Hill)
Democratic senators say Joe Biden shouldn’t be afraid to debate President Trump in the fall, countering other party figures floating the idea that he should skip the debates given his polling advantage and not risk giving Trump a lifeline.
“We’ve had presidential debates for a long time now, and it’s been a way for a lot of people around the nation to be able to see the candidates in action,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is thought to be on Biden’s shortlist of potential running mates.
“I know that Joe Biden will show who he is, a man of both empathy and competence, and I’d like the American people to have a chance to see that,” she added.
Opinion pieces in recent days have criticized the tradition of presidential debates, some of them generally questioning their usefulness.
But Joe Lockhart, a prominent Democratic strategist and former White House spokesman for the Clinton administration, wrote in a CNN op-ed that “whatever you do, don’t debate Trump” and was more specific and pointed in his advice to the Biden campaign.
Lockhart wrote that Trump’s penchant for misleading statements means he is uniquely unsuited for the debate stage and that Biden, who polls show is ahead nationally and in key swing states, would be making a mistake in agreeing to the traditional three presidential debates.
“It's a fool's errand to enter the ring with someone who can't follow the rules or the truth,” Lockhart wrote, noting The Washington Post has chronicled more than 20,000 misleading and false statements made by Trump since he took office in 2017… (LINK TO FULL 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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