BG Note | News - What We're Reading (September 26, 2017)
[AUSTIN METRO]
After court ruling, Travis County will comply with all ICE detention requests (Austin Monitor) LINK TO STORY
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office will honor all federal immigration detainer requests following a federal court ruling that held parts of Texas’ “sanctuary cities” law can go into effect.
A three-judge panel for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a provision in Senate Bill 4 requiring jurisdictions to comply with federal requests to hold jail inmates past their release dates if they’re suspected of being in the country illegally can stand for now.
Judge to rule on DA’s request to put hold on Rep. Dukes’ felony charges (Austin American-Statesman) LINK TO STORY
After admitting they were caught off guard by a flip-flopping witness in state Rep. Dawnna Dukes’ corruption case, Travis County prosecutors are asking a judge to grant a trial delay so they can have more time to prove 13 felony charges. The outcome of a hearing Tuesday afternoon will determine whether the district attorney’s office gets a chance to salvage its damaged case or is forced to walk into a courtroom next month without the support of a key witness who now says the Austin Democrat didn’t break the rules as she collected per diem payments from the state. Dukes’ attorneys say they are ready for trial Oct. 16 and are requesting that state District Judge Brad Urrutia deny the continuance.
Austin ISD enrollment drops by 1,600 students, preliminary data shows (Austin American-Statesman) LINK TO STORY
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office will honor all federal immigration detainer requests following a federal court ruling that held parts of Texas’ “sanctuary cities” law can go into effect.
A three-judge panel for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a provision in Senate Bill 4 requiring jurisdictions to comply with federal requests to hold jail inmates past their release dates if they’re suspected of being in the country illegally can stand for now.
MORE:
As AISD superintendent delivers bond update, protesters rally outside (Austin American-Statesman, 9/25/17)
[TEXAS]
City, state officials spar over funding Harvey recovery efforts at Houston meeting (Texas Tribune) LINK TO STORY
With mountains of debris sitting in front yards and tens of thousands of southeast Texans still in the early stages of re-establishing their lives after Hurricane Harvey’s destructive rainfall, city and state officials sparred Monday over who should cover which recovery costs — and when those funds should be disbursed.
While city and state officials in the weeks immediately following Harvey’s historic rainfall threw verbal support behind building and upgrading massive flood control projects and learning from past development mistakes, a Houston City Council meeting Monday foreshadowed the political and financial tensions that could complicate such efforts.
Supreme Court declines to speed Texas redistricting case (Austin America-Statesman) LINK TO STORY
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request to speed its review of a lower-court ruling that said several congressional and Texas House districts had to be redrawn because they discriminated against minority voters. The request, made by lawyers challenging the maps as unconstitutional, was rejected without comment in orders the Supreme Court delivered in the afternoon. A letter sent to the court on Sept. 15 requested an aggressive schedule, with all briefs submitted by Nov. 13 and distributed to the justices within two weeks, with no deadline extensions permitted.
[NATION]
Texas was a hacking target in 2016 election, feds say (San Antonio Express News) LINK TO STORY
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has formally notified Texas and 20 other states that hackers targeted them prior to the 2016 presidential election. But the ones who tried to mess with Texas didn’t get very far, officials with the Texas secretary of state’s office said Monday. Instead of targeting the state’s voter registration database, hackers in 2016 searched for a vulnerability on the secretary of state’s public-facing website, federal agents said, according to Sam Taylor, an agency spokesman. “If anyone was trying to get into the elections system, they were apparently targeting the wrong website,” Taylor said. The website, www.sos.state.tx.us, is devoid of information on voters, he said, and hackers never found a way to crack into it.
Nothing Is Too Strange for Cities Wooing Amazon to Build There (New York Times) LINK TO STORY
Business leaders in Tucson have tried to mail Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, a 21-foot cactus. The largest conference room in the Tulsa, Okla., mayor’s office has been converted to a war room, with 50 volunteers poring over videos of Mr. Bezos. In Philadelphia, hundreds of Wharton Business School students have a new fall semester assignment: Pitch the city to Amazon. And the mayor of Ottawa flew to Seattle last week to walk as close to Amazon’s headquarters as is publicly accessible. “It’s like ‘The Amazing Race,’” said Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa. “You’ve got this cast of characters running toward the Holy Grail.”
The Bingham Group, LLC is an Austin-based full service lobbying firm representing and advising clients on municipal, legislative, and regulatory matters throughout Texas.