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🟪 Why Austin Energy is betting big on batteries to help manage power costs (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Travis County Democrats elect Luke Warford as November election approaches (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 City shouldn’t make new e-motorcycle rules, say police, public works, city attorney in memo (KXAN)

🟪 E-bike, e-scooter riders will have to dismount on central portion of UT campus (KUT)

🟪 Gov. Greg Abbott touts tech company cooperation, following Trump criticism of data center policy (Houston Public Media)

🟪 While data centers boom in Texas, their plans stay shrouded in secrecy (Texas Tribune)

🟪 New secretary of state will continue to defend Texas’ open primaries against GOP lawsuit (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Data center backlash leads to a new land rush in the Texas oil patch (Wall Street Journal)

READ ON!

💰 Review the Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget documents here

🏛️ MEMO: Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget Adoption Timeline

🏛️ MEMO: Austin Staff Recommends $5.35 Million Reduction to Social Service Grants for FY27

🎙️ The BG Podcast is taking a two-part look at the future of the Austin–San Antonio megaregion.

Episode 269 features my conversation with former San Antonio Mayor and HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros about the case for greater regional cooperation in the Austin San Antonio megaregion.

Episode 270 continues the discussion with A.J. Rodriguez, CEO of the Central Texas Alliance. We discuss how the new organization plans to build consensus across 13 counties, develop a shared regional agenda and strengthen Central Texas’ voice at the state and federal levels.

Listen on:

✅ City shouldn’t make new e-motorcycle rules, say police, public works, city attorney in memo (KXAN)

A memo to city council from Austin Police, Austin Transportation & Public Works, and the Austin City Attorney’s Office says that the city doesn’t need new rules for electric motorcycles, also called e-motos.

It comes after the city council approved an ordinance related to e-bikes and e-motos on May 28.

“Texas law clearly distinguishes electric bicycles from motor vehicles such as e-motos, electric dirt bikes, and pocket bikes, already provides a complete regulatory framework for their operation,” the memo says.

“Texas law clearly distinguishes electric bicycles from motor vehicles such as e-motos, electric dirt bikes, and pocket bikes, already provides a complete regulatory framework for their operation,” the memo says… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Why Austin Energy is betting big on batteries to help manage power costs (Austin American-Statesman)

Austin Energy is investing big in big batteries — and small ones — in an effort to keep electric rates from swinging out of control during periods of high demand.

In the past year, the Austin City Council has approved several major battery projects for the utility; collectively they can provide hundreds of megawatts of power to the Texas grid when needed.
A heat dome parked over the Southwestern U.S. has brought intense heat to Texas in recent weeks, at times driving record-breaking electricity demand, according to the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

When demand is high and supply is lower — like on hot days with calm winds or summer evenings just after the sun sets — power prices can soar. And that demand is expected to keep growing: And Texas' power needs are expected to grow sharply: ERCOT officials said in July that statewide demand could reach about 175,000 megawatts by 2032, nearly double the record set this summer.

The potential for price spikes is a major reason the utility has set its sights on batteries, according to Pat Sweeney, vice president of energy market operations for Austin Energy.

“They function effectively like a power plant, except their fuel is energy off the grid,” Sweeney said. “We buy the energy to store in the battery at a price that’s hopefully lower than what we get when we sell it out of the battery.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Travis County Democrats elect Luke Warford as November election approaches (Austin American-Statesman)

The Travis County Democratic Party elected a new chair on Saturday, two weeks after the former chair resigned under intense internal pressure, party insiders said.

Luke Warford, 37, was elected in a 115-5 vote on a Zoom call, just 87 days before the November elections. Warford is a longtime Democratic operative who worked on President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He ran voter expansion efforts for the Texas Democratic Party in 2020 and later ran unsuccessfully for Texas Railroad Commission, a campaign he has said was motivated by the power grid failure during Winter Storm Uri. In 2024, he founded the Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund, which raises money and provides structural support for Democratic candidates.

He takes over a county party emerging from months of leadership turmoil and fundraising concerns at a moment when Democrats are counting on heavily Democratic Travis County to maximize turnout. The stakes are particularly high this year: Polling shows Texas Democrats with their strongest opportunity in decades to win statewide office, with state Rep. James Talarico projected ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate race. Still, experts and Warford agree that a November win is not guaranteed… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ E-bike, e-scooter riders will have to dismount on central portion of UT campus (KUT)

Riders of electric bikes, scooters and boards on the University of Texas at Austin’s campus will have to dismount and walk in a large portion of central campus, including the Speedway Mall, starting Aug. 24.

The university is designating the area between San Jacinto Boulevard and Guadalupe Street and 21st Street to 24th Street as a “pedestrian friendly zone,” the university announced Monday. The changes start the first day of the fall semester.

The announcement comes after signs went up on campus last week and after the university quietly posted new mobility regulations online, including a “dismount zone map.” The web page was then taken down. The original post did not make clear if the dismount areas included non-motorized vehicles. Cycling advocates expressed concerns about the plan's impact before the university clarified that the ban would not impact manual bicycles and scooters… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Gov. Greg Abbott touts tech company cooperation, following Trump criticism of data center policy (Houston Public Media)

Gov. Greg Abbott is touting major technology companies' responses to his temporary moratorium on data centers, following recent criticism from President Donald Trump. "I established clear guardrails to ensure data centers protect our electric grid, conserve our water, respect our neighborhoods, and pay their own way," Abbott said in a statement.

“They must not pass costs on to Texas families or interfere with their quality of life." The governor issued a directive last week, announcing that no new data centers could connect to the Texas power grid until state regulators conducted a thorough review of their energy and water usage, as well as their impact on nearby communities.

It's a reversal of the governor's previous stance. Abbott once courted data centers, calling Texas "the epicenter of AI development" in November. In an interview with Punchbowl News late last week, Trump criticized changes to Texas’ data center policy. "I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers," Trump said. "I think that's a mistake." Meanwhile, major technology companies have signaled their willingness to comply with Abbott's recent directives, which called for data centers to bring their own energy infrastructure to Texas and reduce their water usage.

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, issued a statement on Monday, saying the company pays for its own infrastructure to connect data centers to the power grid. The company also announced the launch of a new fund to invest in water and energy infrastructure, educators and first responders. Google also touted a "$40 billion investment" in Texas infrastructure and jobs… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ While data centers boom in Texas, their plans stay shrouded in secrecy (Texas Tribune)

Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott called to halt approvals for data centers seeking to connect to the state’s grid until state regulators and the grid operator can audit them.

In an Aug. 3 letter that reinforced how even the state is struggling to get information from data centers, Abbott said proposals should be denied unless they provide details on tax breaks the data center companies will receive, power use and generation, water use and cooling operations, efforts to reduce impacts on local communities and ownership of the facility.

This comes as Texas is rivaling Virginia as the new national leader in data centers fueling an artificial intelligence boom. The Texas Tribune reported there are at least 248 data center projects planned in the state. Those projects were identified in part by combining databases compiled by companies that track the industry, as the state does not publicly track data center development.

Data center companies say they are sharing information and trying to make it easier for the public to see their environmental impact. Google publishes site-specific water consumption for its data centers annually. Microsoft has a Texas fact sheet touting its creation of more than 500 jobs, commitment to renewable energy and efforts to lower light pollution. Crusoe in a statement said it was investing in “earlier and more consistent community engagement,” such as through blog posts, local liaisons and open houses… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ New secretary of state will continue to defend Texas’ open primaries against GOP lawsuit (Texas Tribune)

Robert Howden, the new Texas secretary of state, said in a legal filing Monday that he would continue to defend the state’s open primary system, putting him at odds with the Texas GOP in the lawsuit filed by the party last year.

“The only thing that has changed in this case is the name of the defendant,” lawyers for the state agency wrote, emphasizing that the secretary would “gladly implement statutory changes” if passed by the Legislature.

Republicans in Texas, worried about the moderating influence of Democrats and independents crossing over to GOP races, want to require voters to register with a party before they’re allowed to participate in primaries.

Last year, the Texas GOP sued to strike down the current open primary system, under which eligible Texans register to vote without declaring a party affiliation. Attorney General Ken Paxton sided with the party, leaving then-Secretary of State Jane Nelson to find her own legal representation for the agency. Nelson, a Republican and former state senator, said in legal filings at the time that this was a decision best left to the Legislature… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ A year into the job, Mayor Jones risks holding the bag on largest tax increase in decades (San Antonio Report)

Roughly a year into her first term, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones is calling for some drastic measures to address a ballooning budget deficit: Reconsidering funding for a new $1.3 billion Spurs arena, sunsetting a workforce development program that’s popular with some of her closest political allies, and axing funding for popular events like Fiesta and the San Antonio Book Festival. Under San Antonio’s weak-mayor form of government, however, Jones has little power to do any of these things alone. And after months of irritating colleagues with her go-it-alone approach, she could soon be the one left holding the bag on the biggest tax increases in decades. “My administration inherited a mess,” Jones vented to reporters after Thursday’s council meeting. “This $158 million budget deficit did not happen overnight. This was years and years of poor decision-making.”

Six weeks out from its budget vote, the City Council returned from July recess with tensions as high as ever. Members have been grumbling privately all week about the slew of memos the mayor released about her spending plans without consulting them. On Thursday, a low-stakes vote over a community advisory board ended with one member accusing the mayor of lying about the status of the arena deal and the mayor requesting mediation from the city attorney. Then on Friday, a trio of council members raised the stakes with a press conference in which they characterized Jones’ budget efforts as “disingenuous” and an unwelcome distraction in the middle of the council’s busiest season. Despite not having the support to put a Spurs funding vote on the ballot, they pointed out, Jones has proceeded with a listening tour to rally residents in favor of the idea, the first of which kicked off last night… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Data center backlash leads to a new land rush in the Texas oil patch (Wall Street Journal)

Energy companies in the country’s largest oil field have a plan to turn shrub-covered dirt into gold. It has nothing to do with oil—and everything to do with the data-center boom. Firms including Texas Pacific Land, LandBridge, and EagleRock sit on land empires nestled in the Permian Basin, which spans West Texas and New Mexico.

Their customers are oil-and-gas producers that pay for the right to build roads, drill wells and dump toxic water that is produced alongside the oil they bring to the surface. Now, these landowners want a piece of the AI action. The companies’ ambition is to lease land to data centers and sell them everything from water to construction materials. They are betting that developers facing community pushback from Maine to Arizona will be drawn to the Permian’s abundant land, cheap energy and business friendly climate.

“A lot of places you see all over the country they’re worried about water, they’re worried about power, they’re worried about transmission, and the Permian has all of those things in spades,” said EagleRock Chief Executive Greg Pipkin Jr. The companies’ business model has been like catnip to investors because unlike drilling for oil, which requires huge upfront investments, leasing land is capital light. Texas Pacific’s stock is trading around 37 times its projected earnings over the next four quarters; LandBridge, about 39 times, which analysts say reflect investors’ growth expectations driven in part by data centers.

Their respective stocks are up 14% and 56% so far this year. EagleRock, another firm that sits on a vast land domain, raised $320 million from an initial public offering earlier this year. “There’s so much money,” said Bryan Loocke, an energy partner at law firm Vinson & Elkins. “Everybody’s chasing that white whale.” Chevron recently signed a 20-year agreement to sell electricity to a Microsoft data center and is working to build a gas-fired power plant in the Permian to feed electricity to the facility. Texas Pacific sold land to Chevron for the project. Artificial-intelligence startup Poolside and cloud-infrastructure company CoreWeave have said they would build a massive data-center complex on a sprawling ranch in West Texas… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump says there was ‘some contractor error’ during Reflecting Pool renovation (The Hill)

President Trump on Sunday said there was “some contractor error” with the renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool while still accusing a former Olympian canoeist of vandalizing the Washington, D.C., landmark despite charges against the athlete being dropped.

“There was substantial damage to the Reflecting Pool, also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage, itself,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are working on the Pool, and it will reopen shortly. As with many jobs, there was also some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening, but it was a very small area of this massive Pool, and was relatively inconsequential.”

Trump claimed that a National Park Service “career employee, a highly credible witness,” saw Olympian David Hearn “in broad daylight vandalize the Reflecting Pool by ‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating.” He added that this employee’s testimony was provided to U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. The president concluded his post by saying that security cameras “have been, and are being, installed.”

The remarks went up on Truth Social the day after Trump posted photos of alleged vandalism amid a push for Pirro to revisit the decision to drop the charges against multiple people also accused of vandalizing the pool. This other post on Truth Social included two photos of what appeared to be graffiti and some peeling of the coating of the pool. Both photos were labeled with the word “Vandalism.” Trump is pushing for the Justice Department to backtrack on its move to drop criminal charges against people accused of damaging the site. On Friday, the president pressed for Pirro to revisit “her hastily made decision.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)