The Austin Chronicle

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2001-04-27/81573/

Naked City

Austin Stories

By Amy Smith, April 27, 2001, News

Now that Austin has a rare opportunity to take a breather from the growth frenzy of the last decade, the chamber of commerce has decided to rumble out of hibernation. The business group is touting itself as a new, improved version of its old self, but its most high-profile mission of late gives one an eerie sense of déjà vu. As it happens, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce (GACC) is trying to convince Advanced Micro Devices to build its next mega-manufacturing facility in Austin, and the organization has ferreted out its old legal-eagle warriors (Pike Powers, Ron Kessler, et al.) to help grease the wheels. In the chamber's heyday, the booster club played a prominent role in building Austin's semiconductor industry, but it's been hard pressed to regain that kind of momentum, and the group was pretty much rendered insignificant during the dot-com era. Clearly, an AMD recruitment victory could put the wind back in the old chamber's sails.

Of course, AMD would need an -- dare we say -- incentives package to make the marriage worthwhile, and Mayor Kirk Watson even stated as much at last week's town hall meeting in Buda, where developer Gary Bradley is waging an AMD recruitment campaign of his own (chamber officials no doubt will bring AMD up to speed on the political baggage a Bradley deal would cover; they've got the city to point to as proof; see next Bradley item.)

Austin is one of at least a dozen cities in the U.S. and overseas vying for the chip company's $3-to-$5 billion factory, which will produce AMD's next generation of 300 millimeter chips. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company expects to decide on a site late this year, said AMD spokesman John Greenagel. Chamber Chairwoman Susan Dawson, who hails from the youthful, "new economy" sector of Austin's business community (she's president of the Athens Group, a technology consulting firm), believes the city could reap a heap of benefits from a new AMD chip factory. If Austin doesn't stay apace of the next generation of technology, she says, the city's bread-and-butter economic base could flounder. Eventually, Dawson says, the existing AMD facility in southeast Austin will become outdated; it will shut down and jobs could be lost.

Outside of the chamber and the mayor's office, it's hard to find anyone willing to bang the drum for a subsidized factory coming to town, particularly one that uses enormous volumes of water and electricity -- both more precious than ever these days. From an environmental perspective, AMD has made strides over the years, but it still ranks only so-so on the green score, according to the latest report card put out by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an industry watchdog group. Save Our Springs Chairman Mark Tschurr, who spent years working in the semiconductor field, thumbs his nose at the city's penchant for subsidizing big companies like AMD. "When I first started in this business," Tschurr recalls, "Jerry Sanders, the CEO [of AMD], was considered a rock star. He even drove a pink Rolls Royce. And last year his total compensation package was $80 million. Why would we want to subsidize that?"…

When he filed legislation to create a special taxing district for Gary Bradley's Spillar Tract property in Hays County, Dripping Springs Rep. Rick Green promised that he wouldn't move forward without the explicit approval of the Austin City Council, which has so far been adamantly and unanimously opposed to the district. (The council believes the new entity would constitute a violation of last year's agreement with Bradley, in which the developer agreed to first obtain city approval before forming such a district.) Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria, made similar promises last week when he filed a bill to create the "Hays County Education District" for the same piece of land. But the legislator's word could hardly inspire confidence when Armbrister, a powerful and legendary Austin-basher, took the lead on the legislation last week, and Green -- a fledgling legislator with little political clout to show for his two sessions in office -- pulled back his bill, HB 3644, in anticipation that Armbrister's SB 1812 would easily make it to the House. That bill would reduce the district's powers slightly (no eminent domain, but road building and bonding powers are still included), and would dedicate 100% of the district's revenue from hotel and resort taxes to education -- after bonds for infrastructure are paid off, that is…

By most accounts, writer and political pundit Molly Ivins is tickled pink over her recent parting with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, even though her departure was much more one-sided than the S-T implied in its announcement last week. "They retired Molly," one Ivins ally said. According to the media rumor mill, Ivins' Bush-bashing humor was making the S-T higher-ups all nervous and jittery. Anyway, Ivins' friends report that she's perfectly fine with her new life, which hasn't changed all that much. She'll continue writing her nationally syndicated column, do a column for Time, and keep writing books…

To the Austin Public Library fell the unenviable chore of outing City Manager Jesus Garza's emergency efforts to save the city from fiscal ruin. See, sales tax receipts are down, and costs are up, and rather than drown in red ink at the end of this fiscal year in August -- with prospects of even greater gaps in the next budget -- Garza and city topsiders have started cutting the budget like mad. All vacant positions have been frozen, travel and training are gone, and the library was relieved of the $250,000 it had not yet spent of its book budget. But you weren't supposed to notice any of this, lest you panic and stop spending money and make the sales tax crunch worse, and the city manager has gone to great lengths to cajole or force city administrators to keep their mouths shut, even to their own employees. A disgruntled staffer at Austin Public leaked the news anyway to the daily, much to Garza's apparent chagrin. Ironically, before the sky fell, the library was set to be a big winner in next year's budget game, with the Austin Libraries for the Future initiative calling for as much as $5 million in new investment…

Needed: One top spokesperson for the Austin Police Department. On April 6, the APD posted a job opening on the city's Web site, seeking a new Public Information Program Manager, or chief spin doctor if you will. It seems outgoing PIO Sally Muir has been promoted to Chief Stan Knee's assistant -- a newly created position within the department. Muir says she is making a "slow transition" to her new job as Knee's right-hand woman while still overseeing PIO activities. The department hopes to have a successor picked by June 1. Whoever the lucky person is, media folks around town hope the new spin-meister will make the reporter's job of extracting information less like pulling an impacted tooth. APD recently surveyed local media outlets (the Chronicle and K-EYE TV news were conspicuously omitted from the survey) asking their perceptions of the APD's PIO. The responses were overwhelming: In short, the PIO should be more user-friendly, less defensive, and more forthcoming with information. One theory holds that a real live police officer might do a better job of sharing information than a civilian. Most major cop shops rely on a fellow officer to do their talking for them. That's how it used to be at APD until Chief Elizabeth Watson stepped into the top spot in the early Nineties and put a civilian in charge of disseminating information. Is Muir's departure a sign that APD will return to its old ways?

-- Contributors: Erica Barnett, Jordan Smith

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