🟪 Austin’s top IT officials fired over side gigs — including work for Dallas (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 City finds Round Rock mayoral candidate Kelly Hall ineligible (Community Impact)

🟪 Cedar Park eyed for space industry R&D campus (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Developers pitch data centers’ benefits to Texas lawmakers in committee hearing (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

🟪 Artemis II astronauts are set to return to Earth today. Here's what to expect (NPR)

READ ON!

Today marks Bingham Group's ninth year in business.

Nine years ago, we didn't exist. No clients. No reputation. No guarantee it would work.

We've come a long way. And we're just getting started.

Central Texas is one of the most dynamic regions in the country. Our ambition is to be the firm that helps shape its future.

That starts with the people in our corner.

We work across land use and entitlements, government affairs, procurement consulting, and community engagement.

If any of those are relevant to what you are working on, or someone you know is navigating something in those spaces, we’d welcome the conversation. Reply directly here.

Nine years in. Grateful for every bit of it!

✅ Austin’s top IT officials fired over side gigs — including work for Dallas (Austin American-Statesman)

The three high-ranking IT executives abruptly fired by the city last month were terminated after officials discovered they had undisclosed second jobs, including two who were also working for the city of Dallas in similar roles, the American-Statesman has learned. 

The terminations included Chief Information Security Officer Brian Gardner and Senior IT Enterprise Architects Hawre Sulaiman and William Snead. At the time, the city said the personnel actions stemmed from “an ongoing review” and were not related to cybersecurity threats or information security issues, but it has declined to provide additional details.

According to city employees with direct knowledge of the terminations, Sulaiman and Snead worked simultaneously for both Austin and Dallas, while Gardner operated an undisclosed business. City of Austin employees are required to disclose outside employment and potential conflicts of interest… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ City finds Round Rock mayoral candidate Kelly Hall ineligible (Community Impact)

Kelly Hall, one of two candidates who will appear on the May 2 ballot in the Round Rock mayoral race, was deemed ineligible to run for the position, following a challenge to his residency.

A challenge submitted to the city of Round Rock by a collective of former city leaders April 6 claims that Hall's official application to appear on the ballot in the March 3 Democratic Primary lists a permanent address in Cedar Park, making him ineligible to run for Round Rock mayor.

An April 9 response to the challenge, obtained through a public information request, states that the city has found him ineligible to appear on the ballot on these grounds.

The challenge further states that the document including Hall's address was a notarized, official form prescribed by the Texas Secretary of State. Hall's voter registration at this address was also verified by the county's Democratic Party, the challenge states.

In the city's response, and its letter to Hall detailing the reason for his ineligibility, the city states Hall swore and attested to his permanent address being in Cedar Park for four years as of Dec. 1, 2025, in his application for the Democratic Primary. On Feb. 4, 2026, the response states, Hall swore and attested to his permanent address being in Round Rock for one year and two months in his application to appear on the ballot in the mayoral race… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Cedar Park eyed for space industry R&D campus (Austin Business Journal)

The Central Texas Spaceport Corp. is in the process of finalizing a locale in Cedar Park for what could ultimately be a four-building, 115,000-square-foot research-and-development campus aimed at helping companies in the industry relocate, grow and operate in the region. It comes with an estimated price tag between $78 million and $108 million.

Representatives from the spaceport initiative – which was launched last year with the backing of Williamson County and Cedar Park – said they are assessing locations for what they are calling Central Texas Spaceport and Defense Innovation Campus. It would be a partnership between the CTSDC, University of Texas' Cockrell School of Engineering and private entities in the commercial aerospace and defense industries.

The ambitious goal is to break ground on a first phase this year. Then, a four-building campus would be built out in two additional phases, with the goal of it being a dual-use innovation hub that supports space exploration, defense tech and advanced systems research. It would include a payload processing and clean room, classified mission planning and secure data operations, innovation for space defense technologies, testing for spacecraft and defense systems, a UT space education center and CSTDC offices… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Kyle semiconductor supplier seeks key trade zone designation as it mulls expansion (Austin Business Journal)

A South Korean semiconductor supplier that is known to work with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is aiming to buff up its operations south of Austin.

ENF Technology Co. Ltd. on April 7 was unanimously approved by the Kyle City Council to write a letter of no-objection as the company seeks a Foreign Trade Zone designation at its manufacturing and office facility at 1550 Kohl's Crossing. The designation would save the company approximately $300,000 annually in tariff duties. But they are also working on an agreement with the city where the company would still cover about $15,000 annually in city taxes that would otherwise be withheld. ENF established its U.S. headquarters in Kyle more than a half-decade ago.

ENF specializes in the making of electronic materials, process chemicals, fine chemicals and color pastes. The company has been known in the past to work with Samsung and other chipmaking giants like Micron Technology Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. It announced its Kyle facility in 2019, and currently has 21 employees with average wages of approximately $70,000, according to April 7 meeting documents… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Developers pitch data centers’ benefits to Texas lawmakers in committee hearing (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

Data center developers pitched state lawmakers on the benefits of the industry during the Texas House’s first data center-focused hearing. The Thursday meeting was the House State Affairs Committee’s first on the subject since receiving the interim charge late last month from House Speaker Dustin Burrows. It’s one of several data center-related topics being studied by lawmakers ahead of January, when the elected officials return to Austin for the next legislative session. The committee heard from several data center developers and energy industry officials about the current and projected data center landscape.

Speakers, including developers with North Texas data center projects and representatives from electric companies Oncor and Vistra, touched on subjects such as connecting to the ERCOT power grid, water consumption, workforce development and community involvement during the roughly five-hour meeting. “I think we can see this as the next iteration of, kind of, the oil boom that happened in Texas,” said Haynes Strader, chief development officer at Dallas-based Skybox Datacenters, which has a project in Wichita Falls.

As projects across Texas face pushback from residents, the data center industry professionals assured the lawmakers that they were working to be good community partners and would be beneficial to the economy. Lawmakers asked developers and industry representatives about how much water and power the centers require and what types of systems they use to cool their facilities. Many Texans have raised questions about the amount of power and water it takes to keep large data centers up and running… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Dallas investigating after tip claims IT employees worked for Austin simultaneously, officials say (WFAA)

Dallas officials are investigating after receiving a tip that two city IT employees allegedly held jobs with the city of Austin at the same time.

Officials in Dallas said in an email that they received the tip in November.

Interim Inspector General Baron Eliason opened an investigation into the tip, notifying the Dallas Police Department Public Integrity Unit, as well as City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert and the city of Austin, the email said.

Three technology services staff members, including the chief information security officer, were fired by the city of Austin the week of March 23 following a review, an Austin spokesperson said in an email.

There was no breach of the Dallas IT system or loss of data, officials said. The Austin spokesperson said the incident “was not related to any known cybersecurity threats or issues with information security.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Artemis II astronauts are set to return to Earth today. Here's what to expect (NPR)

Flying by the moon, witnessing an eclipse, and traveling farther from Earth than any humans have before: The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission have hit many milestones since launching from Kennedy Space Center nearly 10 days ago.

Now, if all goes according to plan Friday, they'll have completed their most important one: making it home.

The crew's Orion space capsule is scheduled to enter the atmosphere at 7:53 p.m. ET, just southeast of Hawaii. About 13 minutes later, it should splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

To make it there, the spacecraft will first have to punch through the Earth's atmosphere at about 25,000 miles per hour and experience temperatures upwards of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump attacks Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly over Iran War criticism (New York Times)

President Trump on Thursday assailed Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and two other leading conservative podcasters who oppose the war in Iran in a blistering 482-word Truth Social post that insulted his critics in starkly personal terms. The president reserved some of his sharpest attacks for Candace Owens and Alex Jones, two conspiracy-minded conservatives who in recent days have called for Mr. Trump to be removed from office.

The president had faced weeks of criticism from all four media figures, but had largely ignored them until Thursday. “They have one thing in common, Low IQs,” the president said of the four media figures. “They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!”

Mr. Trump set off a fresh round of criticism from the group with a profane post on Easter Sunday in which he declared that Iran would be “living in Hell” if it did not move to open the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route that has been shut down during the war. Mr. Carlson, who appeared particularly bothered by the Easter statement, described Mr. Trump’s threats to Iran as “evil” and called on members of the Trump administration to stand up to him.

“Now is time to say no, absolutely not, and say it directly to the president: No,” Mr. Carlson said on his podcast. On Tuesday, after Mr. Trump threatened to wipe out the Iranian civilization, Mr. Jones posted that Mr. Trump sounded “like an unhinged super villain from a Marvel comic movie.”

Ms. Kelly asked: “Can’t he just behave like a normal human?” In his post on Thursday, Mr. Trump described Mr. Carlson as a “broken man,” saying he has “never been the same” since his dismissal from Fox News in 2023. He revived a long-running feud with Ms. Kelly over a question she asked during a debate in 2015 regarding statements he had made about women, writing that she had treated him “nastily.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)