BG Reads | News You Need to Know (March 11, 2022)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
Bingham Group CEO A.J. has been appointed to the Strategic Housing Finance Corporation (SHFC) of Travis County by the Travis County Commissioner’s Court.
SHFC works with private developers and public entities to research and create opportunities to provide affordable housing. The primary business activity of SHFC is the issuance of revenue bonds for affordable multi-family housing projects that will be owned by SHFC or a controlled entity.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
SXSW to feature 1,400 artists; 200+ with Austin ties (CBS Austin)
South by Southwest kicks off Friday but for many local musicians, the fun is already getting started. Some Central Texas artists and groups say they’re seeing more opportunities to showcase their own music during the festival with over 200 artists featured in SXSW’s “Austin, TX” category.
SXSW is back in full swing for the first time since 2019. The decision to call off the festival in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic still looms large in local leaders’ minds.
“It was heart-breaking and perhaps the most difficult decision I had as mayor two years ago to cancel South by Southwest,” Mayor Steve Adler said Monday.
Fast forward to this year when SXSW will feature 1,400 artists on 79 stages including several of Austin’s own musicians… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
19-story office tower planned near the Domain in North Austin (Austin American-Statesman)
The company that bought Austin's tallest downtown office tower for $580 million is now staking a claim in the popular Domain area in North Austin.
Kilroy Realty Corp. has purchased 2.9 acres at Braker Lane and Burnet Road, a block from the Domain, where it plans to build a 19-story office tower. The building will be one of the tallest towers in northwest Austin, Kilroy executives said.
California-based Kilroy closed on the sale of the land Wednesday for $40 million. Kilroy plans to begin construction in the middle of this year, contingent on market conditions.
The office tower is scheduled to be completed in 2024. Kilroy, a publicly traded real estate investment firm, has not disclosed a cost for the project.
Kilroy said no financing is required, because it funds its own developments.
The property, at 10615 Burnet Road and formerly known as a planned development called Arena Tower, will have nine floors of office space,12 floors of parking and ground-floor retail space… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Affordability, talent pipeline among concerns for execs as Central Texas becomes a global chipmaking hub (Austin Business Journal)
As the Austin metro stakes its claim as a global landmark for the semiconductor sector, local executives have some concerns of how the region will be able to facilitate incoming growth.
Affordability, housing stock, talent pipeline and infrastructure were among some of the pain points identified March 9 by a panel of semiconductor leaders during an event held by Austin Regional Manufacturers Association. These factors will play a large role in the region's long-term allure as a chipmaking destination, leaders said, especially as the country pushes to bring more semiconductor fabs onto U.S. soil.
"Whether it's the roads system, whether it's the housing and the availability ... Austin needs to keep up," said Farah Tuten, vice president of customer supply chain at NXP Semiconductors NV. "In general, when you think about the number of people that have moved to Austin in the last few years — it's just going to continue to grow. We've got a certain amount of talent here, but with the amount of expansions, the additional engineering, the additional technicians that we need... we need to make sure our infrastructure, whether it's the roads, or the housing, also keep up."
A wave of chip companies have targeted the metro over the past year for expansion, driven by federal chipmaking initiatives and ongoing worldwide chip shortages. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. plans to build a $17 billion next-generation semiconductor plant in Taylor, northeast of Austin, where it has already had a massive chipmaking campus for 25 years. Other companies are circling the region — sources have told ABJ that Santa Clara, California-based Applied Materials Inc. and Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. are considering major investments.
Germany-based semiconductor company Infineon Technologies AG also plans to expand its existing wafer fabrication campus in Southeast Austin, according to recent filings.
At the same time, Austin's population has exploded as companies of all size and sector have relocated or expanded to the region, which has put pressure on Austin's housing stock and cost of living... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
In Houston's First Ward, a surveying dispute of historical proportions (Houston Chronicle)
In the beginning there was the Republic of Texas. The wild new country lured ambitious men like W.R. Baker of New York. Still a teenager when he arrived in Houston, he rose from shopkeeper to run a railroad company, later serving as county clerk, state senator and mayor. He also acquired land in the new city at the soggy confluence of bayous, and by the 1850s Baker had mapped out a neighborhood bearing his name northwest of downtown in what would become First Ward. Decades passed before the city of Houston’s surveyors began drawing lines across the neighborhood to mark the official street grid. Few would have noticed the bureaucrats occasionally took short cuts, creating small errors of geometry. As far back as the early 1900s, insurance maps of Baker’s subdivision — now at the 1-45 and I-10 spaghetti overseen by the Mount Rush Hour statues — showed the measurements diverged 10 or more feet from existing boundaries containing homes, fences and yards.
“People had been living here harmoniously for years before the city surveyors came in and changed the property lines,” said Adam Salazar III, a surveyor and Realtor whose family has lived and worked in the neighborhood for decades. That the neighborhood had two sets of boundaries a few feet apart didn’t much matter much as long as lots were large and land was cheap. Despite its proximity to downtown, Baker’s old subdivision was passed over as Houston’s suburbs expanded from the city center. Yet as the area has been rediscovered as a desirable, close-in neighborhood, developers have diced Baker’s original parcels into tight tracts with modern homes squeezed together for maximum density. Today, every inch of dirt counts. And for some, Houston’s 100-year-old history of sloppy mapping has risen out of the ground like a litigious swamp monster, creating misery and heartbreak… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Dallas allowing city staff to get paid time off to address mental health (Dallas Morning News)
Dallas city employees who experience a traumatic event while on duty will be able to take paid time off to address mental health concerns. The Dallas City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved creating a new rule that expands paid mental health leave to 8,000 workers, including firefighters and 911 call takers. Expanding mental health leave was initially proposed to only add city firefighters and paramedics. City council members later called for including civilian workers, citing traumatic incidents they too face on the job such as answering emergency calls and euthanizing animals. City officials last October approved up to five days or 40 hours of paid mental health leave for peace officers, which mostly covers Dallas’ around 3,100 police officers. It came after a new state law went into effect a month earlier requiring law enforcement agencies to create mental health leave policies for officers impacted by an on-duty traumatic incident.
The new city rule would allow up to 60 hours of paid leave per fiscal year for firefighters and up to 40 hours for other employees. The time wouldn’t be allowed to accumulate or roll over to future years and the need for leave would have to be verified by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist. A copy of the ordinance said the new rule goes into effect immediately… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Businesses assail Texas move to classify care for trans teens as ‘child abuse’ (New York Times)
More than 60 major businesses, including household names in technology and retail, have signed onto a new advertising campaign in Texas protesting a move by the state’s governor to label as “child abuse” medical treatments that are widely considered to be the standard of care for transgender teenagers. In digital ads and a full-page advertisement in Friday’s Dallas Morning News, the businesses assailed a Feb. 22 directive by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, requiring teachers and medical professionals to report to child protective services parents who are helping their children get such treatments as puberty-suppressing drugs and hormones. Mr. Abbott’s order — announced a week before the Texas primary, in which he won nomination for another term as governor — came as lawmakers in Florida have also moved to advance a bill banning instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in some elementary school grades, widely called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Both measures are part of a wave of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. crackdowns by conservative politicians heading into the midterm elections.
“It’s a page from the playbook that we’ve seen before, and it’s very familiar to me,” said Jay Brown, a senior vice president for programs, research and training at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, which arranged for the Texas ads. “Discrimination is bad for business,” Friday’s print ad says, followed by a demand that Mr. Abbott drop the new policy. The signatories include old blue-chip brands like Johnson & Johnson and Macy’s as well as tech giants like Meta and Google, the apparel makers Levi Strauss & Co. and Gap Inc., and retailers like Ikea and REI. “Our companies do business, create jobs, and serve customers in Texas,” the ad says, adding that the companies “have stood to ensure LGBTQ+ people — our employees, customers, and their families — are safe and welcomed in the communities where we do business.” “The recent attempt to criminalize a parent for helping their transgender child access medically necessary, age-appropriate healthcare in the state of Texas goes against the values of our companies,” the ad continues. It warns that the policy could instill fear among parents of transgender children worried that providing them the best possible medical care could “risk having those children removed by child protective services.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Foster girls who’d been victims of sex trafficking endured fresh abuse at a state shelter, report says (Texas Tribune)
Employees of a Texas-contracted facility meant to care for female foster children who are victims of sex trafficking were discovered to be trafficking the same children, according to a federal judge.
Seven children, ages 11 to 17, were victimized by nine alleged perpetrators, according to discussions held during an emergency court hearing called by U.S. District Judge Janis Jack on Thursday. The children remained in the facility for over a month after the abuse was first reported before they were removed.
The children were sexually and physically abused and suffered from neglectful supervision and medical neglect while at The Refuge, a facility located in Bastrop contracted by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, a current Refuge employee reported to state authorities on Jan. 24. The court and the court monitors — watchdogs of the foster care system appointed by the judge — were not notified until Thursday… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas on tap for $280 million as pork barrel spending returns to Congress (Houston Chronicle)
Pork barrel spending has returned to Congress and Texas is on tap for more than $280 million in federal funding for roads, schools, police and a slew of other local needs. The $1.5 trillion government spending bill that passed the House on Wednesday night includes billions in congressional earmarks for the first time since the practice was banned in 2010 amid complaints of corruption and wasteful spending. This time, there are stricter rules and a cap to hold earmarked spending at 1 percent of the budget. Members of Congress had to publicly swear they had no personal financial connection to the recipients of the funding, which could not be private or for-profit companies. And they had to document local support for the projects.
Already Texans are touting the funding they secured in the bill, which would pay for more than 140 projects throughout the state. The money would go to lab equipment for community colleges in San Antonio, LGBTQ-friendly affordable senior housing in Dallas and a Mahatma Gandhi museum in Houston. “As we rebound from the pandemic, this funding will support good-paying jobs and expand our infrastructure of opportunity now and for years to come,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said in a statement detailing the $10.5 million in projects he requested. They include $2 million for a city project to rehabilitate single-family homes for low-income families and $1 million for the San Antonio Housing Authority to expand internet access at its properties. In all, earmarked projects in the spending bill would send more than $91 million to the Houston area and more than $45 million to San Antonio. “It’s incredibly significant,” John Hudak, deputy director of the Brookings Institute’s Center for Effective Public Management, said of the return of the practice. Hudak, who supports the use of earmarks, said they have been misunderstood by the public and have largely gotten a bad rap from high-profile examples of abuse. In reality, earmarks inject more local control in the budget process...(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Facing economic calamity, Putin talks of nationalizing Western businesses. (New York Times)
Besieged by an onslaught of sanctions that have largely undone 30 years of economic integration with the West in the space of two weeks, President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday opened the door to nationalizing the assets of Western companies pulling out of Russia and exhorted senior officials to “act decisively” to preserve jobs. With Russia in danger of defaulting on its sovereign debt and facing a sharp contraction in its economy, the West is betting that the looming, generation-defining economic crisis could make Russians turn on their president. It is also possible, however, that the crisis could end up strengthening Mr. Putin, validating his narrative that the West is determined to destroy Russia. “I have no doubt that these sanctions would have been implemented no matter what,” Mr. Putin said in televised remarks on Thursday, arguing that his invasion of Ukraine served merely as a pretext for the West to try to wreck Russia’s economy.
But the sanctions imposed in the two weeks since the invasion — combined with multinational companies that employ tens of thousands of Russians voluntarily deciding to withdraw amid the global outrage — dwarf any other economic pressure that Russia has faced under Mr. Putin. With the ruble having lost nearly half its value in the last month, prices of basic goods have risen sharply, causing panic buying at supermarkets. The central bank, which has kept the Moscow stock exchange closed since the war began, has introduced new capital controls, preventing companies from withdrawing more than $5,000 in cash for the next six months. “This will be a gigantic, transformational downturn,” said Ruben Enikolopov, rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. The Institute of International Finance, a Washington-based association of financial firms, predicted that Russia would see a 15-percent decline in its gross domestic product this year, which would wipe out much of the economic growth that Mr. Putin has presided over since taking office in 1999… (LINK TO FULL STORY)