Brant Bingamon

Taxpayers on the Hook for Bridge to Tesla Gigafactory in Proposed Plan for Dog’s Head Development

With Upcoming Budget Cuts, Social Service Nonprofits Ask Council to Preserve Funding

“Clarity, consistency, and affordability, that’s what this item is about,” City Council Member Krista Laine said last week, as Council approved a resolution laying the groundwork for an expansion of the HOME initiative. “Our code in Austin is an incredibly complex document that needs to be cleaned up. We must make it quicker and less […]

This past February, Kathleen Harrington, an Austinite living on Ramsey Avenue near 49th and Burnet, wrote to Scott Boone of the Zoning and Platting Commission to try to stop a luxury apartment complex from being built across the street from her home, on the site of the former Rosedale Elementary School. “A 75-foot-high, six-story apartment […]

“I know, I’m a downer,” Christine Maguire told the Council members on the city’s Mobility Committee this past December. “I’m a buzzkill. Nobody invites me to meetings anymore.  “But from the financial services point of view, the city’s risk profile has increased.” Maguire, a leader of the Austin Financial Services Department and its resident expert […]

Marti Bier, a nonbinary organizer with the Texas Freedom Network, spent the last three legislative sessions at the state Capitol trying to protect the trans community from a series of Republican attacks.  “It has felt worse and worse as our humanity and dignity has been legislated away,” Bier told Austin’s City Council last Thursday. “When […]

Mapping Chaos Six months into his second term as president, Donald Trump was nervous about the chances for keeping a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 elections. So in July, Trump demanded that Texas Republicans discard decades of precedent and redistrict the state’s congressional districts in the middle of the […]

It was the summer of 1990 and Walter Moreau had just graduated from Baylor University with a degree in finance. For most people, the next step would be sending out applications for a job as an investment adviser, commercial banker, or accountant. Moreau didn’t want that.  “I wanted to do nonprofit work, not banking,” Moreau […]

Three of Austin’s best-known political leaders are taking on huge challenges in next year’s election – David vs. Goliath scenarios. Rep. Gina Hinojosa is running for governor against Greg Abbott, the most powerful Republican in Texas. Rep. James Talarico is running against the winner of the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, either the longtime […]

Joan Saslow Duce was confused about how much Prop Q would cost. She’d heard different numbers from different sources.  The city of Austin’s estimate was that Prop Q – the proposal to increase property taxes at the Nov. 4 election – would cost the average property owner about $200 a year. Prop Q’s opponents said […]