BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 13, 2023)
[BG PODCAST]
Welcome to Episode 204! Bingham Group Associate’s Hannah Garcia and Wendy Rodriguez with CEO A.J. review the week in Austin politics and more.
The discussion covers:
• City of Houston sues state to block new law (HB 2127) they argue erodes cities’ power → https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/03/houston-texas-lawsuit-local-control/
• The City of Austin begins their budget adoption process on July 14th. —> viewtopic.php
• The City of Austin Planning Commission is urging a quicker process for Land Development Code Amendments after more than a dozen amendments were initiated this year → https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2023/07/planning-commission-urges-quicker-processing-of-land-development-code-amendments/
• City of Austin Ethics Review Commissions approves pandemic-era changes to lobbying ordinance →https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2023/07/ethics-review-commission-oks-pandemic-era-changes-to-lobbying-ordinance/
• Fraud revealed after audit of Parks and Recreation Department → https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2023/07/insufficient-staffing-revealed-in-audit-of-fraud-and-waste-at-parks-and-recreation-department/
>>> SHOW LINK <<<
Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin suspends partnership with state police after trooper pulls gun on 10-year-old (Texas Tribune)
The city of Austin has terminated its widely criticized partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety in which state troopers helped local police patrol city streets.
Gov. Greg Abbott first sent DPS troopers to Austin in late March, at the request of Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. The move was supposed to support the city’s police department, which has been struggling with staffing vacancies and long response times to 911 calls… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Multiple City of Austin panels are asking for a change to the work-from-home policy (KVUE)
Austin's city manager wants all City of Austin employees to return to working in the office three days a week, starting in October. But not everyone agrees that is the best course of action.
On Tuesday night, the City of Austin's Urban Transportation Commission approved a resolution asking the City to change its work-from-home policy. The Joint Sustainability Committee recently did the same… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How developers and environmentalists made peace in the ’90s and charted a course for Austin's growth (KUT)
For one, the ’90s tech boom was spurred not by companies like Google and Tesla, but by the Clinton-era dot-com bubble. The city policies under attack had to do with efforts to curb development over the Barton Springs recharge zone. These political battles pitted West Austin environmentalists against land developers and homebuilders at the Chamber of Commerce and the Real Estate Council of Austin.
Watson says this fight was taking up all the oxygen in the city.
"It was as nasty as any two-party system you can think of,” Watson, who is once again mayor, told KUT after his return to City Hall in 2023. “Aquifer politics dominated a great deal of the politics of this community for a long time. I can even make an argument, in some instances, it still is a part of it.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After years of courting companies, Hutto preps 'megasite' for tens of billions in investment (Austin business journal)
For years, economic development leaders north of Austin have said the 1,400-acre assemblage known as Hutto's "megasite" was poised to pop. That expectation is on the cusp of finally coming to fruition.
The land along U.S. Route 79, some of it owned by the city of Hutto, has been eyed by huge companies, from Tesla Inc. nearly a decade ago to Applied Materials Inc. more recently. Tesla picked Nevada instead of Central Texas — although the electric vehicle company has since put a factory and its headquarters in the Austin area — and nothing has yet come of the Applied Materials project, but other companies are preparing to start pouring billions of dollars into the megasite.
Two large, private projects are in the works that Austin Business Journal has extensively reported on in recent months: a massive data center campus called PowerCampus Austin from Skybox Datacenters LLC and Prologis Inc. and an industrial hub called Hutto Mega TechCenter by Titan Development Ltd. Now, final agreements are being hammered out at Hutto City Hall and construction crews could start work later this year… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Tourism Public Improvement District plan to partially fund homeless services heads to vote (Austin Monitor)
City Council will vote next week on the long-coming agreement with local hotels that could generate roughly $7 million a year for the next decade to fund services to aid people experiencing homelessness.
The Austin Tourism Public Improvement District (ATPID) has been a bargaining chip in local political circles since 2016, with former Mayor Steve Adler and local hoteliers proposing that hotels impose a 1 percent levy on room rates, with up to 40 percent of that revenue directed toward the city’s General Fund.
That has changed to a 2 percent levy and a 20 percent soft cap toward the General Fund, with forecasts projecting $78 million in potential city revenue through 2033.
The draft plan, which was just finalized by local hoteliers last week, would need to get an initial OK from Council before it could be circulated for official petition support from the hotel owners and operators. The plan would affect hotels with more than 100 rooms. It also would need to receive support from hotels representing 60 percent of the total revenue of all eligible hotels, as well as either 60 percent of the estimated 150 eligible hotels or 60 percent of the total square footage of all eligible hotels… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
Gov. Greg Abbott raised $15 million in 12-day window after regular legislative session (Texas Tribune)
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that he raised more than $15 million in the last 12 days of June.
It was the most money Abbott had collected after a legislative session that followed a statewide election. He raised $12.1 million over a comparable period in 2019 and $8.3 million over a comparable period in 2015.
Statewide officials and lawmakers are not allowed to fundraise around regular legislative sessions. The moratorium, lifted on June 19 this year, gave officials 12 days to raise money before the reporting period closed.
The latest filing is due to the Texas Ethics Commission on Monday… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Here's who would benefit from the Texas property tax relief plan advanced by GOP lawmakers (Houston Chronicle)
Texas Republican leaders on Monday ended months of gridlock over how to distribute roughly $18 billion in property tax relief over the next two years, striking a deal that resolved a key sticking point: how to distribute the savings between businesses and homeowners. The compromise, brokered behind closed doors by House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both Republicans, resolves an impasse that began more than four months ago and extended into two overtime special sessions of the Legislature. The deal spreads tax relief between homeowners and commercial property across the state, with a focus on small business owners. Lawmakers are expected to send the new tax package later this week to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has said he will sign it — the last step before voters will be asked to approve the plan in the November election.
The $18 billion deal contains a mix of benefits for homeowners and businesses, both of whom would see direct relief from the biggest part of the package: driving down school tax rates and using more than $12 billion in state funds to backfill the revenue. Another $5.3 billion would go toward raising the school homestead exemption — the amount that homeowners can trim off the taxable value of their principal residence for school property taxes — from $40,000 to $100,000. Under the plan, the owner of a $331,000 home — around the statewide average — would save more than $2,500 over the next two years on property taxes for schools, according to state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the Houston Republican who has spearheaded the upper chamber’s tax plans. (The exact savings would vary by school district.) Lawmakers settled on the compromise after Abbott, backed by Phelan and House Republicans, spent much of June championing an approach that would use all $18 billion to drive down school tax rates. Property tax experts say that approach, known as “compression,” would have distributed more benefits to businesses and high-income households than the final compromise, which directly targets homeowners through the homestead exemption hike. The deal does not provide any direct relief to renters, however. Some conservatives argue that landlords will pass the relief on to tenants if they want to stay in line with the rest of the market… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Sen. Tommy Tuberville relents and says white nationalists are racist (Washington Post)
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), facing a barrage of criticism over a Monday night television interview in which he refused to say white nationalists are racists, relented Tuesday afternoon, acknowledging to reporters on Capitol Hill that they in fact are. “White nationalists are racists,” Tuberville told reporters, after earlier exchanges with reporters in which he continued to insist that was a matter of opinion, a position that echoed his comments from an interview the night before. Appearing on CNN on Monday night, Tuberville was given the opportunity to clarify remarks from this spring when he appeared to be advocating for white nationalists to serve in the U.S. military.
Tuberville said he rejects racism but pushed back against host Kaitlan Collins when she told him that by definition white nationalists are racist because they believe their race is superior to others. He said that was only her opinion and at one point in the back-and-forth characterized white nationalists as people who hold “a few probably different beliefs.” Tuberville’s remarks drew a sharp rebuke Tuesday from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who urged Tuberville to apologize. “The senator from Alabama is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “The definition of white nationalism is not a matter of opinion. White nationalism, the ideology that one race is inherently superior to others, that people of color should be segregated, subjected to second-class citizenship, is racist down to its rotten core. For the senator from Alabama to obscure the racist nature of white nationalism is indeed very, very dangerous.” Tuberville’s CNN interview resurrected another controversy for the first-term senator, who has been in the news mostly for stalling scores of senior military nominations in an attempt to stop a Defense Department policy that helps ensure access to abortions for service members and their families. His holds were a topic Tuesday at a confirmation hearing for Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., President Biden’s choice to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a brief interaction with reporters on Capitol Hill earlier on Tuesday, Tuberville struggled to clarify his views on white nationalists… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Hollywood Shutdown Looms as Actors Say Contract Talks Have Collapsed (new York times)
Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in 63 years neared certainty, with the union representing 160,000 television and movie actors poised to call a strike as soon as Thursday and join screenwriters who walked off the job in May.
SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, said at nearly 1 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday that negotiations with Hollywood studios over a new contract had collapsed and that its negotiating board had voted unanimously to recommend a strike. The previous three-year contract expired at 11:59 p.m., after an extension from June 30 to allow for continued talks.
The union’s national board was scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. Pacific for a final strike vote. Pickets could start later on Thursday.
Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA’s president, called studio responses at the bargaining table “insulting and disrespectful.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)