BG Reads | News You Need to Know (August 29, 2022)
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
Austin's 2022 Council Ballot Slate Set (Bingham Group)
As of 5PM yesterday the field was set for Austin’s November Council elections.
The following offices will be on the 2022 Ballot:
Mayor -> 7 candidates
District 1 -> 4 candidates
District 3 -> 6 candidates
District 5 -> 6 candidates
District 8 -> 4 candidates
District 9 -> 8 candidates
[AUSTIN METRO]
City looks to move away from leased facilities (Austin Monitor)
The city is moving forward on its goal to transition from leased to owned facilities for staff by 2026, according to an update the strategic facilities governance team gave to City Council’s Audit & Finance Committee last Wednesday.
Aiming to develop new and improved facilities for city staff at Rutherford Lane and Johnny Morris Road, Deputy Chief Financial Officer Kim Olivares and her team are proposing a public-private partnership approach similar to the economic development corporation formed in 2020. The public facilities corporation, which would enlist contracted developers to construct, briefly lease and ultimately sell facilities projects back to the city, will seek City Council approval sometime this fall.
Efforts to restructure the city’s real estate assets have been in the works since the city embarked on a Strategic Facilities Plan back in 2012. Since then, shortcomings in the city’s facilities portfolio have remained on Council’s radar, with a 2019 audit finding that a combination of aging buildings, rising rental costs and population growth have led to costly inefficiencies. As of 2021, staff estimate that facilities leases have cost the city an estimated $23 million per year, around twice the projected cost of city-owned facilities.
While there is some pressure to outrun expiring leases in coming years, Olivares says the good news is that the city’s immediate needs, which total around 173 thousand square feet, are within the bounds of existing city-owned assets. Austin Energy’s new headquarters on Barton Springs Road and the Permitting and Development Center by ACC Highland will help to bridge the gap, as well as providing a new public-private development model for future facilities projects… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Planning Commission worries new environmental regulations could make housing more expensive (Austin Monitor)
After expressing concerns over the impact of new water quality and drainage regulations on housing affordability, members of the Planning Commission voted Tuesday to form a working group to tackle the code changes before giving a final recommendation to City Council.
The rules, which were part of the failed Land Development Code rewrite, would help make development more sustainable by requiring enhanced water quality and stormwater infrastructure. But the rules might also hurt housing affordability by adding to the cost of building.
“When we did the LDC rewrite, during that time, a lot of these regulations were balanced with new planning, new density, other types of regulations,” Commissioner James Shieh said. “And now my concern is … we don’t have the balance of additional entitlements.”
The rules will require upgraded stormwater infrastructure like rain gardens or biofiltration ponds instead of the typical concrete detention ponds, as well as enhanced landscaping requirements in many new developments. A full list of the changes can be found in the presentation by city staff.
Council decided to dust off the code changes, which had been shelved since the LDC rewrite failed in 2020, via a June 9 resolution sponsored by Council Member Kathie Tovo.
In another change, projects will no longer be allowed to build to the level of impervious cover that currently exists on a site. Commissioner Greg Anderson gave the example of Lamar Union, where the developer was able to exceed typical impervious cover limits because the site “was a giant parking lot with some retail.”
“This ordinance as is, without any additional gives, would have cost them 80 homes, eight of them affordable homes,” he said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Efforts to unionize at Tiff's Treats stores peter out (Austin Business Journal)
Tiff's Treats employees who had been attempting to unionize have ended those efforts.
Petitions to form unions at a handful of Texas locations of the Austin-based cookie chain have all been rescinded in recent weeks.
At the final two stores where organizing was underway, in Austin's Mueller district and in Lewisville near Dallas, a majority of workers opted not to move forward with union elections, according to an Aug. 25 social media post.
"With no stores moving to election we are ending our organizing effort at Tiff's Treats," labor organizers, using the Twitter handle Tiff's Treats Workers United, said in the post. "We appreciate the support we have received from the public."
A spokesperson for the Nation Labor Relations Board, which oversees union petitions and elections, confirmed that the petitions are being withdrawn.
It's unclear why the union efforts petered out. Labor organizers did not respond to an emailed request for comment... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
South Texas is a 2022 battleground as Republicans target Latino voters (Houston Chronicle)
Though victory margins for Texas Republicans at the top of the ballot have grown tighter in recent years, there are few competitive races this fall after the Legislature redrew the state’s political maps. Most of the action this year is at the statewide level — say, the race between Gov. Greg Abbott and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke — where redistricting doesn’t affect outcomes. Almost all of the other congressional and legislative districts are shaped in a way that strongly favors one party or the other, making it difficult for the opposing party to seriously compete there. But several races in South Texas, mostly at the congressional level, are the exception. Though the region has historically been a Democratic stronghold, Republicans saw surprising gains along the Mexican border in the 2020 elections, and they’re hoping to build on that momentum this November.
National Republicans have opened several field offices in South Texas and ramped up campaign efforts there. Of the four competitive races in the region, they already hold two seats — one of which U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores wrested away from Democrats in a June special election — and two conservative Latinas have the remaining districts within reach. If successful, their efforts could prove beneficial at the statewide level, too. Republicans are also pursuing a state Senate and a state House seat based in Brownsville — the same area that Flores now represents. “Republicans see the idea to put Democratic candidates who have enjoyed a natural advantage in those areas on the defensive, and they’re doing so,” said Jim Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “They’re doing so by defending what gains they’ve made and trying to press Democrats — mainly in congressional but even in some legislative races in that region.” It’s a particularly interesting election year, given the dozens of high-profile political issues at play. For months, Republicans predicted a “red wave” this fall — not only were inflation and high gas prices plaguing the Biden administration, but the president’s party historically loses ground in the first midterm after their election. Now public opinion seems to be shifting toward the Democrats. After a string of gun violence and the reversal of Roe v. Wade sparked outrage across the country, Democrats see an opportunity not only to maintain their seats but to potentially make gains… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas crypto miners could require as much power as all of New York state (Dallas Morning News)
Cryptocurrency miners are accelerating their push to expand in Texas far beyond what authorities had initially expected, threatening to send the state’s electricity use skyrocketing. Enough miners have applied to connect to Texas’s power grid to use up to 33 gigawatts of electricity, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs the system, said in an email Friday. That’s a third more than what the grid operator’s chief executive officer said in April that officials were preparing to handle over the next decade. It’s also enough to power all of New York State. A spokeswoman for the grid operator, known as ERCOT, said officials expect to have enough power plants available to meet any rise in demand. The miners will need approval from ERCOT before connecting to the grid. The surging interest underscores how appealing Texas remains to crypto miners, even as the value of Bitcoin has plunged more than 50% in the past year.
And while many of those miners may never actually set up shop, the shear number applying raises questions over whether the state’s grid, which collapsed during a deadly 2021 winter storm, will be able to meet the demand for electricity. Crypto miners currently account for about 1.2 gigawatts of electricity demand in Texas, according to the Texas Blockchain Council, which represents miners. That’s enough to power about 240,000 homes. Over the past four months, the number of miners applying to plug into the grid has doubled. The state has aggressively recruited miners, touting its cheap power, abundant renewable energy and business-friendly regulatory environment. Texas has some of the cheapest electricity rates for big consumers, averaging about 7.57 cents per kilowatt-hour in June, a third lower than the national average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It also has more wind power than any other state, which is appealing to miners pushing to appear more environmentally friendly. In April, ERCOT’s interim CEO Brad Jones said he was working with miners to prepare the grid to handle about 25 gigawatts of crypto demand over the next decade. When asked if Texas aims to be the world’s largest mining center, he replied: “Yeah, that’s what we are planning.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas education board freezes amid revolt over social studies (Houston Chronicle)
Conservative education activists are accusing the Republican-controlled State Board of Education of helping liberals smuggle bits of Critical Race Theory into social studies standards that were expected to be up for an initial vote next week. But the vote is conspicuously absent from the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, as a faction on the board calls for delaying them into next year, when 3 current GOP members are expected to be replaced by new members who lean more to the right. “I’ve gotten thousands of emails,” said Pat Hardy, a Republican board member from Fort Worth who is leading the call for delaying and rewriting the standards. “People are paying attention, and I’ve gotten all those people saying you need to slow this process down. Well we are slowing it down because we’re not having first reading next week.”
The first draft of the K-8 social studies curriculums were proposed last month. They were broadly praised by left-leaning groups as more inclusive and progressive than past versions for some of the same reasons that conservatives are objecting to them now. Their frustrations with the early drafts of the standards included: the inclusion of LGTBQ activism alongside civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, a requirement for students to define “sexual orientation,” non inclusion of Moses as a historical figure, supposed inclusion of Critical Race Theory in ethnic studies courses and the lack of a requirement for history students to learn the U.S. motto, “In God We Trust.” Many throughout the broad network of the Texas Republican party are registering concern at the direction of the social studies standards, said Brendan Steinhauser, a longtime Austin Republican strategist. Steinhauser has worked with the Lake Travis Families PAC, one of many similar such groups across the state that have pushed conservative control of local school boards by running and funding candidates on partisan platforms aimed at scrubbing out Critical Race Theory, LGBT books and other materials they believe contain liberal themes off campuses. (Critical Race Theory has become a catchall phrase for the role of white Americans in perpetuating discrimination, and for diversity, equity and inclusion policies in general.)… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Houston City Council approves $18.6 million for housing development for homeless (Houston Public Radio)
The Houston City Council voted Wednesday to approve $18.6 million for a new permanent supportive housing development for the homeless.
Last week, council delayed the vote due to numerous council members opposing the NHP Foundation for mismanagement of other properties like Cleme Manor Apartments in Houston's Fifth Ward.
Mayor Sylvester Turner said he agreed there have been problems and council members made valid points at last week's council meeting.
"I did not disagree with the comments that were made, the way Cleme Manor has been managed and handled has been horrific," he said. "No tenant should be living in substandard conditions."
The new 149-unit housing complex will be located at 3300 Caroline Street in Midtown, just a block away from Houston Community College Main Campus. The city and the county are working collaboratively on the project and the county previously voted to put in $10 million.
Turner said in order to prevent the same situation from happening at the new complex he will put measures in place to protect the tenants, like adopting the county's Tenant’s Bill of Rights… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Privacy bill triggers lobbying surge by data brokers (Politico)
Congress has never been closer to passing a federal data privacy law — and the brokers that profit from information on billions of people are spending big to nudge the legislation in their favor.
Five prominent data brokers boosted their collective spending on lobbying by roughly 11 percent in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period a year ago, according to lobbying disclosure records reviewed by POLITICO. The $180,000 lobbying bump came as House Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise on a bipartisan bill aimed at giving consumers new powers to limit the collection and sharing of their data.
The brokers, including U.K.-based data giant RELX and credit reporting agency TransUnion, want changes to the bill — such as an easing of data-sharing restrictions that RELX says would hamper investigations of crimes. Some data brokers also want clearer permission to use third-party data for advertising purposes.
Privacy advocates say these requested changes would entrench practices in the data broker industry that have raised years of concerns about information collected en masse and shared without proper consent.
Hundreds of companies have reported lobbying on the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, H.R. 8152 (117), including drugmakers, nonprofits and tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon. But no industry is potentially more affected by the bill than the data brokers, which rely largely on third-party data — information collected by companies that users have no direct relationship with.
For example, location data brokers can collect information on people’s whereabouts through apps, and can gain access to data that websites collect on people’s demographics and online shopping activities.
This unregulated flow of data fuels an estimated $240 billion market, and lawmakers have raised concerns that the collections are being used to surveil protesters and influence specific groups with targeted ads… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[BG PODCAST]
Episode 163: Managing Growth in the City of Round Rock with Mayor Craig Morgan
Today's episode (163) features Mayor Craig Morgan of the City of Round Rock. He and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss his path to office, and the challenges and opportunities facing Round Rock. -> EPISODE LINK
Enjoyed this episode? Please like, share, and comment!
[HEARINGS AND MEETINGS]
Wednesday
SUBSCRIBE / CONTACT US AT: info@binghamgp.com