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August 29, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Council rejects resolution to target youth homelessness funding (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Austin airport expansion to get even bigger under new deal approved by council (KUT)

🟪 Austin updating its long-term planning guide (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 “Bathroom bill” aimed at trans people approved by Texas House after decade of failed attempts (Texas Tribune)

🟪 A Texas congressman is quietly helping Elon Musk pitch building $760M tunnels under Houston to ease flooding (Texas Tribune)

🟪  The boss has had it with all the office activists (Wall Street Journal)

READ ON!

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ Austin City Council Regular Meeting – Today @ 10AM // Livestream Link

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

🏛️ City of Austin Org Chart (as of July 2025)

💰 2026 City of Austin Bond - Public Input

ℹ️ 2025 Essential Resources for Navigating the City of Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Council rejects resolution to target youth homelessness funding (Austin Monitor)

A resolution aimed at prioritizing youth homelessness funding failed at City Council on Thursday following extended debate over budget process and policy flexibility.

Staff from the Homeless Strategy Office expressed concern that the proposal, even softened from its original form, could restrict their ability to adjust investments based on the needs shown by real-time data and trends across homeless populations.

At the heart of the debate was a provision directing city staff to “target” 15 percent of new homelessness spending to serve youth, in line with their estimated proportion of the local unhoused population. While the resolution’s sponsor, Council Member Ryan Alter, described the language as a flexible “target” rather than a mandate, both Watson and staff said the phrasing could carry binding effects… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin airport expansion to get even bigger under new deal approved by council (KUT)

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, already bursting at the seams, will see its largest-ever expansion start to take final shape after a City Council vote. For travelers, the decision will lead to more gates, more terminal space and possibly higher ticket prices.

The council's action on Thursday gives airport staff the green light to finalize a long-term deal with seven major airlines: Southwest, Delta, United, JetBlue, Spirit, American and Alaska. The 10-year contract unlocks billions of dollars and sets the scale of ABIA's two most public-facing expansion projects.

One is a new concourse with 20 to 30 gates, connected to the Barbara Jordan Terminal by an underground tunnel. The other is a massive "Arrivals and Departures Hall" the size of six football fields that will serve as a new front door to the airport and bring rideshare pickup back to the curb.

When the expansion is complete in the early 2030s, ABIA's annual capacity will grow from 15 million travelers to more than 31 million, giving some breathing room to a city-owned facility already serving more than 20 million passengers a year.

The so-called "use and lease" agreement with the seven airlines — almost three years in the making — locks in the carriers' support for the expansion and seals a commitment to lease yet-to-be-constructed space.

"We're hearing from the airlines that they want more than 20 [additional gates]. So now we've got to make sure that we are scaling up the rest of the projects at the airport," Austin Aviation Department Assistant Director Sam Haynes said. "We need to build parking infrastructure, curbside [facilities], security checkpoints to meet the passenger activity."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin updating its long-term planning guide (Austin Business Journal)

Austin will update its long-term planning guide that shapes how the city and its neighborhoods will grow in the future. 

The Austin City Council approved a resolution at its Aug. 28 meeting to spend $3 million to update the city’s Imagine Austin plan, which was first adopted in 2012 and is meant to serve as a guide for growth and development over a 30-year period. The plan is used by city staff when considering recommendations on zoning changes. 

The city will conduct community engagement events on how it should update the Imagine Austin plan from fall 2025 to fall 2026, consider a draft review for the new plan between winter 2026 and spring 2027 and adopt the plan sometime in 2027, according to city documents.

“An updated plan should clearly communicate a shared citywide vision and establish a framework that guides future investments, infrastructure improvements, and community priorities through a data-informed, holistic lens,” the resolution stated… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ Travis County directs $34M in taxpayer funds for affordable child care (Community Impact)

Less than a year after voters approved a countywide tax rate hike to expand affordable child care, Travis County officials are rolling out the first wave of local investments for the Creating Access for Resilient Families, or CARES, initiative.

County staff determined the quickest way to increase long-term capacity for early childhood and after-school slots would be through existing partnerships.

Travis County commissioners approved a contract Aug. 26, allocating $24 million to Workforce Solutions Capital Area. The agency already actively accepts applications from both parents and providers, distributing funding for student scholarships and gaps in provider funding for subsidized slots.

Through this existing infrastructure, the funding commitment is expected to result in child care for 1,000 children ages 0-3… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ “Bathroom bill” aimed at trans people approved by Texas House after decade of failed attempts (Texas Tribune)

Texas House members clashed over a bill that would restrict which restrooms transgender people can use in government buildings and schools, but ultimately approved it late Thursday.

Representatives approved Senate Bill 8 on a 86-45 vote after several hours of tense debate that was at times interrupted by people in the gallery shouting insults at lawmakers who supported the bill. The House gallery, where visitors can watch proceedings, was emptied out by staff and Department of Public Safety officers after the disruptions continued.

SB 8 would restrict bathroom use in government-owned buildings, public schools and universities based of sex assigned at birth and would not allow exceptions for transgender inmates’ housing in prisons and jails. It would also bar those assigned male at birth from accessing women’s domestic violence shelters, unless they are under 17 and the child of a woman also receiving services.

Bathroom bills proposing civil or criminal penalties for entering restrooms not matching biological sex have been proposed in Texas for more than a decade, and 19 other states have successfully passed their own proposals. The Texas House, however, has largely failed to garner traction for bathroom bills after a tense battle over one proposal in 2017. The Texas Senate has passed six different bathroom bills since 2017… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ Medicare will require prior approval for certain procedures in six states, including Texas (New York Times)

Like millions of older adults, Frances L. Ayres faced a choice when picking health insurance: Pay more for traditional Medicare, or opt for a plan offered by a private insurer and risk drawn-out fights over coverage. Private insurers often require a cumbersome review process that frequently results in the denial or delay of essential treatments that are readily covered by traditional Medicare.

This practice, known as prior authorization, has drawn public scrutiny, which intensified after the murder of a UnitedHealthcare executive last December. Ms. Ayres, a 74-year-old retired accounting professor, said she wanted to avoid the hassle that has been associated with such practices under Medicare Advantage, which are private plans financed by the U.S. government. Now, she is concerned she will face those denials anyway.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to begin a pilot program that would involve a similar review process for traditional Medicare, the federal insurance program for people 65 and older as well as for many younger people with disabilities. The pilot would start in six states next year, including Oklahoma, where Ms. Ayres lives. The federal government plans to hire private companies to use artificial intelligence to determine whether patients would be covered for some procedures, like certain spine surgeries or steroid injections. Similar algorithms used by insurers have been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits, which have asserted that the technology allowed the companies to swiftly deny large batches of claims and cut patients off from care in rehabilitation facilities.

The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections. The government said the A.I. screening tool would focus narrowly on about a dozen procedures, which it has determined to be costly and of little to no benefit to patients. Those procedures include devices for incontinence control, cervical fusion, certain steroid injections for pain management, select nerve stimulators and the diagnosis and treatment of impotence... 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ A Texas congressman is quietly helping Elon Musk pitch building $760M tunnels under Houston to ease flooding (Texas Tribune)

The devastating flooding in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 killed dozens of people, inundated hundreds of thousands of homes and left the community desperate for a solution.

Since then, local flood experts have extensively studied the possibility of a multibillion-dollar tunnel system across Harris County. Studies have focused on the construction of pipelines, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, that could ferry massive amounts of water out to the Gulf in the event of a storm.

Now, after years of research and discussion, Elon Musk wants a piece of the project.

An investigation by The Texas Newsroom and the Houston Chronicle has found that the billionaire, in partnership with Houston-area Rep. Wesley Hunt, has spent months aggressively pushing state and local officials to hire Musk’s Boring Co. to build two narrower, 12-foot tunnels around one major watershed. That could be a potentially cheaper, but, at least one expert said, less effective solution to the region’s historic flooding woes.

Hunt’s team has said the Boring project would cost $760 million and involve the company getting 15% of the cost up front from state and local coffers… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ This rule made many online purchases dirt cheap for U.S. consumers. Now it's ending (NPR)

For nearly a century, the "de minimis" trade exemption let people skip import fees for shipping small stuff. But after the U.S. raised its limit to $800, that small stuff became big business, driven by online shopping.

"We're talking about 4 million de minimis packages being processed a day," says Courtney Griffin of the Consumer Federation of America.

The de minimis rule also became increasingly contentious. Backers say it brings low prices to consumers. But critics say the rule hurts U.S. companies and allows unsafe or even illegal items to be imported without a close customs inspection.

Sweeping changes are arriving Friday, when President Trump's executive order suspending the de minimis rule for all U.S. imports takes effect. The shift is already rippling around the world: From Asia to Europe, shipping services are pausing their deliveries to the U.S., saying they need time to figure out how to revamp their paperwork and payment processes… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The boss has had it with all the office activists (Wall Street Journal)

Company bosses are sounding a clarion call to office activists: Stop disrupting the workplace with your freedom of expression—or else. Microsoft fired two more staffers Thursday for engaging in on-site protests against the company’s work with the Israeli military. The move, following the firing of two employees who occupied an executive’s office this week, is the latest example of business leaders cracking down on political dissent.

Alphabet’s Google last year called in police, then fired dozens of workers who engaged in a similar protest. Tesla ousted an employee after he created an anti-Elon Musk website and plastered his Cybertruck with protest slogans. Some companies are restricting even nonpolitical debate, as JPMorgan Chase did after an influx of employee comments complaining about the bank’s return-to-office mandate this year.

The new, hard-line playbook that companies are adopting to confront employee activism reflects two developments: One is a political climate in which companies risk the ire of the White House—and some consumers—if they appear to cater to “woke” forces, including their own staff. The other is an ever-tougher job market in which white-collar workers—especially in tech—have lost considerable leverage. The result is a more adversarial employer-employee dynamic in which bosses are far less concerned with accommodating their workers’ political and personal views.

These days, many business leaders would just as soon trim head count as appease vocal staff. That has fired up some office activists even more. “The workers didn’t become more militant for fun,” said Mohamed Abdalla, a University of Alberta assistant professor, who has studied worker activism. Both companies and employee activists “are becoming more efficient and ruthless in their tactics.”

Some tech companies now include clauses in customer contracts noting that projects won’t be canceled amid worker pressure, Abdalla said. Veteran corporate strategists and executives say they have been struck, too, by companies’ willingness to call law enforcement to deal with workers. Many typically let corporate security handle such matters.

The stepped-up tactics are a far cry from the early days of the first Trump term, when dozens of CEOs joined their workforces in publicly protesting a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries. In 2018, Ruth Porat, then Google’s chief financial officer, joined her finance team outside during a global walkout aimed at getting the technology giant to change its policies to make it safer for women to report instances of sexual harassment... 🟪 (READ MORE)

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