BG Reads // April 10, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
April 10, 2025

Presented By

Serving Central Texas.

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🏛️ Austin City Council meets a today at 10AM - Agenda and Livestream below

🦾 Austin company's manufacturing plant 'shot in the arm' for one of region's smallest and newest cities

📐 Developers eye 257 acres in Hutto (Community Impact)

🏥 Federal public health cuts could cost Texas $700 million (Texas Tribune)

📈 Trump's 'buy' tip on social media before tariffs pause made money for investors (ABC News)

[BINGHAM GROUP]

✅ Please join me in welcoming Brittany Heckard to Bingham Group’s Consultant team. Our consultants are contract-based specialists who provide strategic guidance to clients across business, community, and policy issues in Central Texas.

Brittany brings over a decade of experience in public and government affairs, community engagement, and social impact. She previously led legislative and public affairs initiatives at AT&T and supported legal and regulatory efforts at Davis Kaufman PLLC.

Her work has included partnerships with organizations such as Waymo, Ancestry, the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, and the Texas Cultural Trust, where she developed campaigns focused on advancing equity and justice across Texas.

We’re excited to have Brittany on board and look forward to the expertise she brings to our clients and partners.

🎓 Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax hosted a Washburn University School of Law alumni reception last night in Austin. A Topeka native and Washburn undergrad alum, Broadnax welcomed fellow Ichabods—including myself, a law school graduate (Note: I don’t practice law!)—for an evening of connection and community-building.

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ Austin City Council:

🟪 Thursday at 10AM: Austin City Council Meeting // Agenda Link (63 Items) + Livestream Link (ATXN1)

🟪 Tuesday, April 7, 2025: Austin City Council Work Session // Agenda Link + Archive Video (4h 10m)

📝 Memos:

🔁 ICYMI Public meetings:

We’re growing BG Reads and want to better understand who’s reading. Your quick answers help us shape content and build a stronger community.

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Austin company's manufacturing plant 'shot in the arm' for one of region's smallest and newest cities (Austin Business Journal)

An Austin-based mechanical contractor that has ties to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is working on a big facility in Coupland that its mayor called a "shot in the arm" for one of the smallest — and newest — cities in the region.

Dynamic Systems Inc. — which has done work for some of the region's most well-known companies, including Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. — is underway at 170 County Road 454 on what's been described by sources as a roughly 30,000-square-foot facility that will employ more than 30 people.

It's on track to become the largest private-sector employer in Coupland, which has a population of around 300 and voted to incorporate in 2012. It's located about 30 miles northeast of Austin and halfway between Taylor and Elgin.

Dynamic Systems worked with the City Council over the last few months to bring the entirety of the 24-acre plot near the corner of County Road 454 and State Highway 95 into the city's limits. That was finalized at a January council meeting, and dirt was moving at the site in early April… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ PINNED STORY // City facing a $33 million deficit for 2026 (Austin Monitor, 4.9.2025)

Given current conditions, the city’s budget analysts are projecting a $33 million shortfall in the city’s General Fund in Fiscal Year 2026, with that number increasing to $79.9 million by FY 2030. City Council heard the bad news from City Manager T.C. Broadnax and Budget Director Kerri Lang at Tuesday’s City Council work session.

One of the biggest factors in the projected deficit is the 3.5 percent cap on yearly property tax increases without voter approval in an election. That limit was imposed by the Texas Legislature in 2019. Some members of Council, including District 4’s Chito Vela, have been particularly emphatic about the need for such an election.

Council members have taken to referring to that election as a TRE (tax rate election), so the public will likely be hearing that term for at least the next six months. As Broadnax noted, the city is also facing “a continued slowing of sales tax revenue growth.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Developers eye 257 acres in Hutto (Community Impact)

Hutto has seen rapid growth in the last decade, leading to development, infrastructure and housing projects to accommodate over 8,000 new residents in a five-year period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The latest project proposed for the city is The Gateway at Hutto—a 257-acre mixed-use development in Hutto’s extraterritorial jurisdiction. Mixed-use developments are especially useful for cities going through periods of growth, Hutto City Manager James Earp said. The diversity of housing, work and entertainment allows cities to find middle ground between suburban sprawl and urban skyscrapers, he said.

Capland Development, formerly known as Harris & Straub, has worked with landowner Steven Wolfe over the last two years to bring The Gateway at Hutto to fruition, real estate developer Jake Straub said. Wolfe hoped to bring a live-work community to Hutto but didn’t know if his vision was feasible, Straub said. Along with Robert Deegan, principal landscape architect with Rialto Studio, Capland put together a plan for the site at the corner of East Wilco Highway and CR 137, leveraging the new highway.

“The positioning on both sides of the East Wilco Highway lends itself to a more dense development,” Straub said. “Not just a traditional single-family [neighborhood] out in the boonies, but [it] makes more sense to do something dense and a little more urban.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Austin-based Aalo Atomics outlines vision for fundraising and future growth (Austin Business Journal)

Austin-based startup Aalo Atomics, which is developing small-scale nuclear reactors, is aiming to raise hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years to buoy the effort.

The company raised $27 million last year to establish a manufacturing presence and now is in the process of raising a $100 million series B round to fund its plan to build out a prototype and acquire a license through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, CEO Matt Loszak said.

After the series B — which will focus mainly on venture capital — Loszak said the company expects to raise a $200 million series C round as it ramps up manufacturing and deploys its modular reactors to data centers and artificial intelligence sites throughout the country. The company could go wider in its search for capital in the series C, he said, possibly seeking government funding or traditional debt issuances from banks, as well as seeking funding partnerships with commercial customers.

“Eventually, we want to make this product so well proven that banks are willing to offer us debt,” Loszak said, speaking after an April 7 presentation at which the company unveiled its Aalo Pod concept to create modular structures for its small reactors… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

✅ 53 international students’ immigration statuses revoked at four more Texas universities (Texas Tribune)

Fifty-three more international students at four Texas universities have had their legal status changed in a wave of removals from a federal database that have swept across the state and the nation.

Nineteen students from the University of Texas at Dallas and 27 students from the University of North Texas were removed from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS database, according to university officials.

Three students at Texas Tech University and four at Texas Women’s University also had their visas revoked. The universities did not identify the students. Visa revocations prevent re-entering the U.S. but do not immediately end an individual’s status, but SEVIS removals do, limiting students’ options and causing a much more immediate effect. Robert Hoffman, an immigration lawyer with offices in Houston and Bryan, said SEVIS removal also can affect employment eligibility and the status of dependents like spouses and children, whose ability to stay in the U.S. depends on the primary status holder.

“Unfortunately, these kinds of terminations kind of short-circuit due process by not allowing the student the opportunity to hear the specifics of their charges or defend themselves,” Hoffman said… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Federal public health cuts could cost Texas $700 million (Texas Tribune)

New preliminary figures out Wednesday indicate Texas’ share of federal plans to clawback $11.4 billion in pandemic-era grants to states means Texas could face more than $700 million in public health funding cuts.

The number — the first dollar figure released about what Texas state and local public health agencies could lose — was announced by Kirk Cole, senior adviser to Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner Dr. Jennifer Shuford, during an agency committee meeting.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notified states it was putting an end to public health grants to states made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many state and local agencies have spent most of the grant money that was set to expire this summer. But most of the recalled money includes grants that were not due to expire until mid-2026.

“It is money we knew was going to end but just not quite so soon,” said Cole at Wednesday’s DSHS Public Health Funding & Policy Committee meeting… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Texas' measles outbreak isn't slowing down. How can that change? (NPR)

Slipping vaccination rates in West Texas have led to the state's largest measles outbreak in over 30 years, with more than 500 patients affected as of April 8 and cases spreading to New Mexico and Oklahoma. Last week, an unvaccinated Texas child died from measles, marking the third death tied to the outbreak.

Public health experts say there is a playbook for slowing outbreaks like this one: Identify cases. Isolate patients. Track where they've been and who they may have exposed. Most of all, drive up the vaccination rate.

"That's the way to stop it. This only ends with immunity," said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at The Brown University School of Public Health.

This strategy isn't novel. The benefits of measles vaccination have been well-established for more than half a century. The emergence of the vaccine in the 1960s meant parents no longer had to accept the risks of serious complications or death that came with the common childhood disease.

By 2000, measles was considered eliminated in the U.S. — thanks to vaccination. But misinformation about the vaccine began to spread around the same time… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

✅ Trump's 'buy' tip on social media before tariffs pause made money for investors (ABC News)

When Donald Trump offered some financial advice Wednesday morning, stocks were wavering between gains and losses.

But that was about to change.

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social at 9:37 a.m.

Less than four hours later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on nearly all his tariffs. Stocks soared on the news, closing up 9.5% by the end of trading. The market, measured by the S&P 500, gained back about $4 trillion, or 70%, of the value it had lost over the previous four trading days… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Governors push back as Trump directs the Justice Department to go after state climate laws (The Hill)

Democrat governors are pushing back as President Trump directed his Justice Department to target state climate laws. 

“The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority,” said a joint statement from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Luján Grisham. 

“We are a nation of states — and laws — and we will not be deterred. We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans’ fundamental right to clean air and water, create good-paying jobs, grow the clean energy economy, and make our future healthier and safer,” they said.

Trump, in an executive order on Tuesday, directed the Justice Department to identify any state and local laws and regulations that hamper energy development and stop their enforcement. 

It specifically prioritized any laws aimed at combating climate change and greenhouse gas emissions or promoting environmental social and governance initiatives and environmental justice… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Mike Huckabee, longtime Israel supporter, confirmed as US ambassador (Politico)

Mike Huckabee, a staunch ideological ally of Israel, was confirmed by the Senate to serve as the United States’ ambassador to the country on Wednesday.

The former Arkansas governor and two-time presidential candidate was tapped by President Donald Trump for the post just after the November election. He has never previously worked in a diplomatic or national security role for any U.S. administration.

Huckabee has been a longtime supporter of Israel, which he has said is rooted in his religious faith. He’s visited Israel more than 100 times.

He’s also encouraged Israeli settlements in the West Bank. While running for president in 2008, Huckabee claimed “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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