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🟪 Agenda + Livestream for 10AM Austin City Council Budget Adoption Reading

🟪 City Council faces final budget decisions on social service changes, funding priorities (Community Impact)

🟪 Austin fire chief retires abruptly; city to launch nationwide search (KUT)

🟪 UT Dell Medical Center expected to cost $5B, construction could start next month (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 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)

🟪 Trial lawyers, once a force for Democrats, reclaim political clout in Texas GOP’s MAGA wing (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Texas cuts child care subsidy program. Here’s what that means. (Texas Tribune)

READ ON!

🏛️ Today @10AM: Austin City Council Budget Adoption Reading // LIVESTREAM (ATXN1)

💰 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 Council faces final budget decisions on social service changes, funding priorities (Community Impact)

City Council is set to adopt Austin's fiscal year 2026-27 budget and property tax rate as soon as Aug. 12. The decision will cap off weeks of review that largely centered on the anticipated loss of social services funding, and various strategies to fill those gaps.

The setup

Since City Manager T.C. Broadnax released his proposal for Austin's next budget in July, council members have heard hours of resident testimony and briefings from city staff about the spending plan.

Much of the public focus on the FY 2026-27 budget has been on the anticipated loss of millions of dollars for social services from housing to public health, which city staff began planning for earlier this year. Some residents have also spoken out against a tax rate increase and other rising city costs, and many have asked to specifically hold Austin Police funding—the one piece of the budget that effectively can't ever decrease under state law—flat… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin fire chief retires abruptly; city to launch nationwide search (KUT)

Austin Fire Chief Joel G. Baker is retiring on Aug. 31. He will be unavailable and out of the office starting Aug. 11, the city announced Tuesday.

The city and the fire department declined to give a reason for Baker's departure.

Tom Vocke will step in as the acting fire chief effective Tuesday, according to a city memo. He will hold the interim position starting Sept. 1.

Baker joined the Austin Fire Department in December 2018 after retiring from Atlanta's Fire and Rescue Department. He was Austin’s first African-American fire chief. Baker worked for 30 years in Atlanta and also served as the fire chief in his last three years there, according to his LinkedIn.

“We will miss Chief Baker and his ever-present positive attitude,” Vocke wrote in an internal email to the fire department. “He has been known to say, ‘Every day is a holiday. Every meal is a banquet. Every payday is a fortune.’ We wish him a retirement filled with holidays, banquets and fortunes.”

The city is now launching a nationwide search for Baker's replacement… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ UT Dell Medical Center expected to cost $5B, construction could start next month (Austin Business Journal)

More details about the size, budget and construction schedule for the UT Dell Medical Center have emerged. The project will represent another multi-billion-dollar investment in Austin.

The University of Texas Board of Regents could, on Aug. 12, vote to approve early-phase construction work for the UT Dell Medical Center, which is being built on a 27-acre site in North Austin. The medical center is being developed by the University of Texas in partnership with the MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the architecture firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill is leading the design of the project. 

Documents attached to the Board of Regents’ agenda also show the Dell Medical Center is set to cost $5 billion. The medical center is being developed as an AI-native hospital and health system that treats cancer and other forms of disease. The documents also included a proposed construction schedule for the project. They say that construction could start in September and be substantially completed by July 2030, while final completion should happen by December 2030… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin FC names new CEO amid leadership shuffle (Austin Business Journal)

The longtime president of Austin FC is getting a promotion. 

The team announced on Aug. 11 that it's promoting Andy Loughnane to CEO. He will now oversee the day-to-day operations for both the business and soccer arms of the organization. Loughnane had been the president of Austin FC since it was formed in 2019 and previously led only the business operations of the organization.

“I'm exceptionally proud of what our staff has accomplished together thus far, and we know there is much more we want to achieve for our fans, our community, and our club,” Loughnane said in a statement. “I look forward to this next chapter and the work ahead as we pursue our highest ambitions.”

Loughnane was named one of the Austin Business Journal’s power players due to the solid financial operations he helped set up. Before coming to Austin FC, Loughnane spent four years as the president of business operations for the Columbus Crew, a Major League Soccer team based in Columbus, Ohio. Outside of Austin FC, Loughnane also serves as a board member of Visit Austin, the Austin Sports Commission and 4ATX Foundation… 🟪 (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)

✅ Trial lawyers, once a force for Democrats, reclaim political clout in Texas GOP’s MAGA wing (Texas Tribune)

When Armin Mizani won the GOP primary for a north Texas House district in March, warning bells went off in certain Republican circles.

It’s not his political ideology. Mizani is a die-hard conservative who, as mayor of Keller, proudly partnered with federal immigration officials, denounced Sharia law and slashed property taxes.

It’s his profession: Mizani is a personal injury lawyer, a career path once so closely intertwined with Democratic politics that both were pushed to the sidelines when Republicans gained control in Texas in the early 2000s.

But now, a quarter century later, some trial lawyers are reclaiming their political relevance by aligning with Republicans. The Texas Trial Lawyers Association, once the de facto war chest of the Texas Democratic Party, sponsored the state GOP convention. Wealthy personal injury lawyers are throwing cash behind conservative candidates, including Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate bid… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas cuts child care subsidy program. Here’s what that means. (Texas Tribune)

The Texas Workforce Commission Tuesday voted to cut 9.5% of the state’s child care scholarships, which represents approximately 14,000 seats for children.

For some regions that need to meet lower scholarship numbers in 2027, those cuts will begin by the fourth quarter of 2026, which begins in September.

Child care scholarships are a federal funding program administered by each state, similar to SNAP or Medicaid, meant to provide child care for low-income working families.

In 2025, Texas lawmakers allocated an unprecedented one-time investment of $100 million to the scholarship program that was supposed to stretch through 2026 and 2027, but the funds were quickly depleted due to inflation. The rising cost of child care without additional financial assistance from the federal government has exacerbated a growing crisis in Texas’ child care landscape, where more than 100,000 children are waiting for scholarships. Now, workforce development boards that were tasked with allocating scholarships are being asked to cut the number of children they serve in 2027… 🟪 (READ MORE)