🟪 Mayor not on board with ATP's $47M office deal (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton investigates Austin police ICE policy (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Austin Community College keeps tuition the same for 13th year in a row (KUT)

🟪 Tesla’s Gigafactory water use surges in Austin as new chip plant looms (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Judge temporarily reinstates women, minority-owned businesses into Texas HUB program (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Abbott threatens to pull $110M in grant funds if ICE policy isn't revoked (Houston Chronicle)

🟪 Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal (Politico)

🟪 AI is using so much energy that computing firepower is running out (Wall Street Journal)

READ ON!

I'm honored to join the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce Advisory Board, appointed by Chair-elect David Teo. Advisory Board members are drawn from the region's most dynamic civic and business leaders, selected for their expertise, their networks, and their commitment to inclusive community leadership.

In this role, I'll help forge meaningful connections, offer strategic guidance, and ensure that diverse voices remain central to the Chamber's most important conversations.

(Pictured with David at last night's official opening of the Enterprise Singapore Austin Overseas Centre)

✅ Mayor not on board with ATP's $47M office deal (Austin Business Journal)

The organization shepherding the buildout of Austin’s light rail could commit up to $47 million to leasing and building out a new downtown office space.

The Austin Transit Partnership’s board could vote on April 15 to authorize the local government corporation to spend $32 million on leasing the space. The 90-month lease would cover 51,600 square feet at the 100 Congress office building. The board could also authorize ATP to spend $15 million to build out the office space.

ATP, which is tasked with leading the development of the $8.2 billion light rail route, said it currently employs around 200 people and has outgrown its current space. It has plans to grow its headcount to 300 by the end of the year and will need an additional 15,000 square feet of office space.

The plans for the new ATP office have a high profile opponent. Mayor Kirk Watson — who is also an ATP board member — posted to the Austin City Council forum that he’s opposed to the office lease deal. Watson also asked for consideration of the spending items to be postponed from this week's meeting… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton investigates Austin police ICE policy (Austin American-Statesman)

The Texas Attorney General’s Office is investigating the city of Austin over a policy that limits how police interact with federal immigration agents, setting up a potential clash over state law requiring cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The investigation comes after policy changes implemented by Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis in March that prohibit Austin officers from arresting or detaining someone based solely on a noncriminal ICE warrant  — a move city officials argue is legal but critics say may conflict with Senate Bill 4, the state’s 2017 law prohibiting cities from limiting police cooperation with federal immigration agents. 

City spokesperson Jenny LaCoste-Caputo confirmed to the American-Statesman on Monday night that the Attorney General’s Office sent a letter Friday notifying the city of the investigation. 

City Manager T.C. Broadnax said in a written statement the policies were revised earlier this year to help officers navigate an influx of administrative warrants, which are issued by ICE to arrest individuals for immigration violations.  

“The revised General Orders were designed to ensure the City can continue meeting our local public safety needs, provide clarity for our officers, and continue complying with all legal requirements, including the U.S. Constitution and SB4,” Broadnax said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin Community College keeps tuition the same for 13th year in a row (KUT)

For the 13th year in a row, tuition at Austin Community College for the 2026-27 academic year will remain $85 per credit hour with fees for in-district students, solidifying the college as one of the most affordable options for higher education in the nation.

The college's board of trustees voted last week to extend the tuition freeze.

Monique Johnson-Jones, associate vice chancellor of advising and student planning for ACC, said keeping tuition low increases the chance a student will enroll or continue college classes. She said it also gives students who are anxious about starting college “one less thing to worry about.”

“It's expensive to live in the Austin metro area, and so anything that can be done to reduce the financial burden to our students, current and prospective, is something that we want to work to do,” Johnson-Jones said.

For in-district students who take 30 credit hours a year, the tuition cost with fees is about $2,550 — significantly lower than many community colleges in the state and country… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Tesla’s Gigafactory water use surges in Austin as new chip plant looms (Texas Tribune)

Tesla’s Giga Texas increased its annual treated water use by more than 200 million gallons in just two years, raising concerns about whether Austin can fulfill its long-term water conservation plans as Elon Musk advances plans for a new semiconductor plant expected to push demand even higher.

From 2023 to 2025, Tesla’s annual treated water use rose about 68% to 556 million gallons becoming Austin Water’s third-largest customer — up from fifth in 2023, according to Austin Water. The increase is raising new concerns about how water limits are applied, as residents are urged to conserve water while large industrial users continue to expand. In March, Musk announced Terafab, a proposed $20-25 billion semiconductor fabrication plant near Giga Texas, also known as the Gigafactory, in eastern Travis County. Environmentalists warn the project could further strain a persistently drought-stricken region and potentially clash with the city’s long-term water planning efforts.

“It’s extremely alarming,” said Paul DiFiore, an environmental attorney who sits on Austin’s Water Forward task force. “All of a sudden, they’re using more water than the vast majority of people in the city.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Judge temporarily reinstates women, minority-owned businesses into Texas HUB program (Texas Tribune)

An Austin district judge on Monday temporarily blocked Texas’ removal of women and minorities from the state’s Historically Underutilized Business program.

Four business owners and a trade association sued the state of Texas and acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock on March 2 over the agency’s emergency rules that removed women and minorities from the HUB program and stripped their businesses of their HUB certifications. The temporary injunction on Monday blocked the emergency rules and re-instituted the plaintiffs’ certifications.

The HUB program was created through bipartisan legislation during the 1990s to give minority- and women-owned businesses a leg up when seeking state contracts. The program does not set quotas for the the number of HUB-certified businesses, but sets goals that state agencies generally strive to meet… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Abbott threatens to pull $110M in grant funds if ICE policy isn't revoked (Houston Chronicle)

Gov. Greg Abbott is threatening to pull $110 million in grant funds from Houston if the city does not revoke its new policy limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The director of Abbott’s Public Safety Office, Andrew Friedrichs, told Mayor John Whitmire that Houston was out of compliance with its agreement for state grant funds and must revoke the policy by April 20, according to a letter obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

If the city does not, the letter states, Houston would be on the hook for repaying $110 million within 30 days of the grant's termination. Houston City Council last week eliminated a police department policy that required officers to wait 30 minutes for ICE agents to pick up people with civil immigration warrants.

It also required the department to make reports to the council about its cooperation with ICE. The proposal passed in a 12-5 vote, with Whitmire in support. "Gov. Abbott expects all local governments -- cities or counties -- to cooperate with ICE in enforcing federal immigration laws," said Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris. "Creative efforts by local governments to get around that obligation are unacceptable."

Houston's proposal was brought forward by Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Abbie Kamin and Edward Pollard under Proposition A, which allows any three council members to add items to meeting agendas as long as they’re lawful. Whitmire, in a letter to council members Monday evening, said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had also opened an investigation into whether the city had violated state law with the new policy. In a separate press release, Whitmire said he had “repeatedly warned” Salinas, Kamin and Pollard about the potential legal and financial ramifications of passing the policy… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales to resign amid misconduct allegations; special election looms (Texas Public Radio)

When Gov. Greg Abbott calls for a special election to fill Texas Congressional District 23, Democrat Katy Padilla Stout says she will “absolutely” run.

On Monday U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales announced on social media that he will resign from Congress after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a staffer who later took her own life.

Gonzales essentially admitted to the affair during an interview with a right-wing talk show host.

Gonzales was facing a congressional ethics investigation into his conduct and there was a possibility of an imminent congressional expulsion vote. He had also terminated his re-election campaign after failing to secure the GOP nomination and being pulled into a primary runoff.

Yet Gonzales framed his resignation announcement not as a dodge of a looming political accountability but as a biblical revelation.

“There is a season for everything, and God has a plan for us all,” he wrote on X Monday evening.

“When Congress returns tomorrow, I will file my retirement from office. It has been my privilege to serve the great people of Texas,” he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal (Politico)

Voters in a small Missouri town, unhappy with the city council’s approval of a $6 billion data center, struck back at the polls last week, ousting all four incumbent council members running for reelection. Tuesday’s election in Festus, Missouri — a city of 12,000 people along the Mississippi River a half-hour south of St. Louis — is the latest example of growing public backlash against cities agreeing to host hyperscale data centers over the objections of residents concerned about their local impacts.

On the same day as the Festus election, voters in Port Washington, Wisconsin, a Milwaukee suburb, where tech giants Oracle and OpenAI are building a $15 billion data center campus, also registered their disapproval by overwhelmingly passing a first-of-a-kind referendum to restrict future projects. At least three other cities across the country will vote on similar measures this year.

The rout of half the Festus City Council was fueled by a surge in voter turnout and widespread frustration with the data center approval process. “It’s really the way the deal was handled that led to this kind of uprising,” said Rick Belleville, who won the nonpartisan race for Ward 4 councilman by more than 40 percentage points over incumbent Jim Tinnin, who’d voted to approve the data center.

The other three losing incumbents were: Jim Collier, Brian Wehner and Bobby Venz. Belleville, 70, has never run for public office before and walked neighborhoods and knocked on doors during the campaign. What he learned was that residents were frustrated by the city’s unwillingness to hear their constituents and a general lack of transparency around the project, he said. “I ran because I thought the city was not listening to people,” he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ AI is using so much energy that computing firepower is running out (Wall Street Journal)

The artificial intelligence gold rush is rapidly drying up the supply of the one resource that AI developers can’t do without: computing power. The sharp capacity crunch has caused consternation among power users, forced companies to scuttle products and led to reliability problems. The issues are a warning sign for the AI boom, as they may limit the utility of powerful new AI tools just as massive amounts of users have begun to rely on them to boost productivity.

Over the past few months, demand has exploded for “agentic” AI, autonomous tools that use the technology to independently perform tasks, from writing software code to scheduling house tours for real-estate brokers. Companies have been scrambling to secure the availability of computing capacity needed to serve a growing base of customers who are also significantly increasing their AI use.

“Everyone’s talking about oil, but I think what the world is mainly short of is tokens,” said Ben Pouladian, an engineer and tech investor based in Los Angeles. A token is a unit of measurement in AI to track how much computing resources are being used for a task. “AI is at this point no longer just some chatbot that we ask for a recipe while we stand in front of the fridge. It’s orchestrating tasks, it’s getting smarter,” Pouladian said. All of it points to a classic problem that has popped up in technology booms throughout history, from the 19th-century railroad expansion to the telecom and internet explosion of the early 2000s.

Demand is growing far faster than companies are able to access resources and build out infrastructure. Historically, price increases have been among the only ways to address a supply crunch, but such a move could be perilous for frontier AI companies, who are in a ferocious competition to gain users.

Hourly rental prices for GPUs, the microchips used to train and run AI models, have surged since the fall. Anthropic, the maker of popular chatbot Claude and viral coding app Claude Code, has been plagued recently by frequent outages. The company has begun metering computing supply to users during peak hours, but the rollout has been marred by customers who have complained that they are reaching the limit far too quickly… 🟪 (READ MORE)