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🟪 Austin City Council signs off on $295 million bond proposal (Austin Current)

🟪 University of Texas poised to quietly make sweeping bike, scooter restrictions (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Federal relief for Kerrville's second round of flooding slowed (Texas Public Radio)

🟪 Why Texas is betting 'Y'all Street' can take on Wall Street (NPR)

🟪 More than 85,000 students using school vouchers in Texas' first year (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Texas’ anti-NIMBY housing law is getting results (Dallas Morning News)

🟪 25 states sue over Trump’s new tariffs, calling them ‘pretext’ to replace his old ones (Associated Press)

🟪 How Democratic Socialists are wrestling with their next moves (New York Times)

READ ON!

🏛️ COUNCIL MEETINGS:

💰 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:

✅ Austin City Council signs off on $295 million bond proposal (Austin Current)

The Austin City Council finalized on Tuesday a bond proposal totalling $295 million that could go to voters this November, choosing to move forward with funding for Austin’s parks and libraries over recommendations from city financial staff to wait two more years. City Council will vote whether to place the proposals on the ballot this Thursday.

The council voted 8-3, with Mayor Kirk Watson and Council members Marc Duchen and José Velásquez opposing the measure.

The vote caps about two years of debate over whether Austin should ask voters to approve a tax increase to fund capital improvement projects after last fall’s defeat of Proposition Q. While city financial staff and Mayor Kirk Watson argued the city should wait until 2028, several council members on Tuesday said funding for deteriorating parks and libraries could not wait any longer, teeing up a final decision on Thursday.

The $260 million in parks funding would go towards:

The $35 million in community facility funding would go towards:

✅ University of Texas poised to quietly make sweeping bike, scooter restrictions (Austin American-Statesman)

University of Texas officials appear poised to ban bicycles, scooters and other micromobility devices from a large area of central campus with little warning — a move cycling advocates say would have wide-ranging implications for students and commuters alike.

A new rule posted on the university’s website would require cyclists to dismount and walk their bikes through some of the busiest central-campus pedestrian corridors, including the Speedway Pedestrian Mall, beginning Aug. 24.

The pending change has prompted calls for reconsideration from Austin cycling leaders like Alejandro De La Vega and Chelsea Burns. De La Vega and Burns, the chair and vice chair of the Austin Bicycle Advisory Council, respectively, penned a letter to UT Parking and Transportation Services last week urging department leaders to explain their decision and consider community input before implementing the dismount zone.

Burns and De La Vega told the American-Statesman in an interview that limiting cycling through central campus would force riders onto busier roads with inadequate bike infrastructure such as Guadalupe Street and San Jacinto Boulevard.

“Without a safe, allowable route across campus, bicycles are going to get shunted onto less-safe roads for bicycles,” Burns said. “The biggest concern that I have is about the ability to safely get across campus in a timely fashion.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Federal relief for Kerrville's second round of flooding slowed (Texas Public Radio)

July 16 flooding damage to Kerrville has hit $55 million, but federal disaster relief is not triggered until that figure reaches $60 million, according to a high-ranking city official. Assistant Kerrville City Manager Michael Hornes recently briefed the Kerrville City Council on damage and recovery efforts following the flood, the second in a year to hit the city. He said he believed damage may reach $60 million dollars from this year's flood, but urged residents to be patient this go-around, reminding them of the much heavier devastation in the July 4, 2025, flooding, especially the associated 117 deaths within the county. Due to the terrible scale of the first flood, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump were able to move fast on disaster declarations, he said.

"Last year, it went so fast. I think the expectation from folks is ... why isn't it going to go this fast again," he told the city council. "Because it doesn't go this fast. There're sad, sad reasons why it was that fast last year. So, I know ... no one wants to hear it, but please be patient." The July flood this year claimed the lift of 65-year-old John Steward when his mobile home was swept away. Hornes told the council more than 800 homes within the city were reported damaged, destroyed, or affected by flood survivors. He said some of those reports appear inflated due to duplicated storm reporting. The Texas Department of Emergency Management and Federal Emergency Management Agency have been able to validate or certify more than 600 of those reports. Hornes said the second flood hit some homes already being repaired from last year's Fourth of July flooding. He said much flood debris has been removed, and dumpsters are being set up across the city for residents to help speed up that effort… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Why Texas is betting 'Y'all Street' can take on Wall Street (NPR)

The wind is whistling through an enormous, dusty construction site, surrounded by highways, office towers and a sports arena. Inside, hundreds of workers are spending years — and some $700 million — building Goldman Sachs' big bet on the future of Wall Street.

The New York investment bank plans to open this 800,000-square-foot campus in 2028, with space to eventually employ more than 5,000 local workers. The building will supersize Goldman's presence in Dallas, where the company already has its second-largest U.S. office after its global headquarters in Manhattan.

Even half-built, this massive structure has become a visible symbol of the financial industry's recent growth in Texas — and the state's ambitions to steal more business from Wall Street's birthplace in New York. Now local political leaders and the financial executives they've wooed to Dallas are eager to talk up its financial boom — or what they call "Y'all Street."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ More than 85,000 students using school vouchers in Texas' first year (Texas Tribune)

More than 85,000 families are participating in Texas’ private school voucher program during its first year, a number that could increase as state officials finalize enrollment data, according to a new state report.

White families make up the largest share of participants so far, as do those considered low-income, the comptroller’s office noted in the report released Monday. The report did not say how many students previously attended private school or received home schooling, although earlier data showed that 57% of families invited to the program fell into that category.

While it appears unlikely that the majority of first-year voucher recipients will come from public schools, the largest numbers of participating families live within the boundaries of some of the state’s most populous districts — with Houston, Dallas and Northside in the San Antonio area leading the way… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas’ anti-NIMBY housing law is getting results (Dallas Morning News)

When the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 840, the goal was to boost the state’s housing stock in major cities. The law allows developers to build multifamily and mixed-use projects in districts zoned for commercial use without having to request a zoning change. 

Many cities have been howling in protest since. Some have put up new rules to undermine SB 840. 

But even with those obstacles, SB 840 appears to be working. Since the law went into effect in September, it has directly facilitated more than 1,250 housing units and indirectly supported at least 7,235 units, according to a report by a bipartisan coalition that backs the law. 

The nearly 8,500 homes that have been enabled by SB 840 are not all a done deal. Some have been approved, and others are pending. But one thing is clear: Developers want to build this housing.

The coalition that authored the report — Texas Appleseed, the American Enterprise Institute and Texans for Reasonable Solutions — identified multifamily applications that would not have been allowed before SB 840 and other projects whose rezoning was made easier by the law.

Some developers have chosen to go through a rezoning process for their multifamily projects instead of building by right with SB 840. The thinking is that some multifamily will be allowed regardless of the outcome of the zoning case. That gives developers leverage to negotiate with city officials, who’d prefer to have some say rather than none… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Federal HIV funding changes threaten services in San Antonio and Texas (Texas Public Radio)

HIV prevention and treatment organizations in San Antonio and across Texas face uncertainty as the Trump administration redirects federal grants and proposes significant reductions in public-health spending. The administration recently decided not to renew approximately $46 million in direct Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants to 96 community organizations. The money supports HIV testing, outreach, connections to treatment and referrals for PrEP and PEP—medications that prevent infection. Federal officials plan to route funding through state and local health departments, arguing that local agencies can better determine community needs.

Advocates warn that states are not required to continue supporting existing organizations, which often have trusted relationships with people who might not visit government clinics. The potential consequences have already surfaced in San Antonio. In 2025, the San Antonio AIDS Foundation temporarily suspended free HIV and sexually transmitted infection testing after Texas officials told contractors to pause federally funded work while awaiting CDC guidance. Testing resumed, but the disruption demonstrated how funding delays can quickly affect patients. BEAT AIDS, the Alamo Area Resource Center, Metro Health and other local providers also offer testing, outreach, housing assistance and connections to care. Congress rejected most of the administration’s proposed fiscal 2026 HIV reductions, preserving major CDC and Ryan White HIV/AIDS programs.

However, the Minority HIV/AIDS Fund was cut by $4 million. The White House’s fiscal 2027 proposal would eliminate roughly $800 million in core CDC HIV-prevention funding, although Congress will determine final spending. Health advocates warn that reduced testing and outreach could leave infections undiagnosed. Effective treatment can suppress HIV to an undetectable level, protecting patients’ health and preventing sexual transmission… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ 25 states sue over Trump’s new tariffs, calling them ‘pretext’ to replace his old ones (Associated Press)

Twenty-five states sued the Trump administration Monday over its latest tariffs, calling them a pretext for replacing import taxes the Supreme Court struck down in February. The United States last month imposed double-digit tariffs on 59 countries and the European Union, charging that they had not done enough to crack down on imports produced by forced labor.

The new tariffs took effect just as the clock ran out on temporary tariffs President Donald Trump had turned to after the Supreme Court defeat. “After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Joining New York in the lawsuit announced Monday are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Trump, who argues that high tariffs will revive American manufacturing, last year overturned decades of U.S. policy that favored lower tariffs and ever-freer trade. Invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, he imposed double-digit tariffs on imports from almost every country, saying America’s longstanding trade deficit amounted to a national emergency. But the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA did not authorize tariffs. The decision forced the administration to send refunds to importers that had paid the tariffs.

Eager to make up the lost revenue, Trump turned to temporary 10% worldwide tariffs. But they expired at midnight July 24. Now he’s tapping more durable tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which permits the president to impose import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in unfair trade practices. Trump used Section 301 to impose big tariffs on China in his first term, and they survived court challenges… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ How Democratic Socialists are wrestling with their next moves (New York Times)

When a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America recently appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and enthusiastically affirmed the group’s platform — including goals such as eliminating the U.S. Senate and working toward abolishing prisons — Democratic strategists wrung their hands and Republicans licked their lips. Acknowledging such aims, both parties predicted, could hinder progressive candidates and other Democrats painted with an extremist brush in the midterm elections. At the D.S.A.’s national summit in Chicago over the weekend, many democratic socialists who had seen the Fox interview felt something different: pride. “You’re going to have to constantly push and advocate for things that people don’t think, until they think it,” said Chanpreet Singh, a D.S.A. leader from Seattle.

Hundreds of members of the group, the country’s largest socialist organization, gathered here at a moment of surging political influence, some wearing bright red shirts, swapping labor-strike tips with their “comrades,” sharing voter turnout strategies and admiring far-left merchandise (guillotine earrings, “Land Lords Suck” pins and red roses, a symbol of the group). Many dismissed the notion that their positions could be a political problem and said they felt no need to moderate them. Electoral wins were proof, they reasoned, that Democratic voters were moving closer to them. As an ardent socialist movement has encroached more deeply into the Democratic Party, with D.S.A.-backed candidates ousting incumbent Democrats from New York to Colorado and notching other victories this year, the challenges associated with that often-fraught cohabitation are coming into sharper focus. Those include questions on each side about the utility of working with the other.

“Toxic to a broad majority of the country” was how Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, described aspirations such as prison abolition and doing away with the Senate. She predicted that Republicans would make socialist policies “one of their main attack lines.” Already, President Trump and other Republican leaders are going further, seeking to brand recent Democratic nominees, falsely, as “communists.” The next big tests for democratic socialists will begin on Tuesday in Democratic primaries in Michigan and Missouri for the U.S. House. And Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive doctor who is not a democratic socialist but shares many of D.S.A.’s priorities, is running for the Senate in Michigan, a major battleground... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Defying Trump, Cornyn uses his lame-duck power (New York Times)

Not long after Senator John Cornyn lost his re-election bid to a right-wing challenger backed by President Trump, the Texas Republican predicted that the remainder of his Senate tenure might be a “pretty bumpy ride” for the president. He warned that he and other lame-duck senators had “some cards to play” and would not hesitate to use them.

This week, depending on the metaphor you prefer, Mr. Cornyn either made himself a giant senatorial pothole or laid his hand on the table. By wielding his vote on the Judiciary Committee as leverage, a newly liberated Mr. Cornyn threw Mr. Trump’s choice for attorney general, Todd Blanche, into limbo as the Senate left town for the weekend on Thursday night.

Both he and Senator Thom Tillis — the North Carolina Republican who chose not to seek re-election after Mr. Trump threatened to unseat him — said that they would not advance Mr. Blanche’s nomination unless the Justice Department agreed to narrow an immunity settlement that Mr. Trump reached with the I.R.S. to protect himself and his family. The red line that Mr. Cornyn has drawn is fairly thin. He and Mr. Tillis are not seeking to kill the deal that Mr. Blanche negotiated with Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, which gave the president, his family and his businesses broad immunity, potentially saving them at least $100 million in penalties and drawing accusations from Democrats of self-dealing.

They are merely demanding modifications — in writing. Still, his willingness to dig in his heels against a demand by Mr. Trump at a moment when the president’s popularity is sagging and senators are increasingly frustrated with him is notable. Though Mr. Tillis has been more openly critical of Mr. Trump for months, Mr. Cornyn, a onetime contender for Senate majority leader, had long been a reliable Republican vote who rarely said a critical word about the president… 🟪 (READ MORE)