Presented By

December 1, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Feds signal confidence in Austin Light Rail system, part of Project Connect (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Half-priced Uber rides aim to boost Austin's downtown business (KUT)

🟪 Texas’ “bathroom bill” is about to go into effect. Here’s what it does. (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Texas proposes hiking licensing fees for summer camps by as much as 4,000% (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Patrick wants Texas Senate to probe solar firms for alleged China ties (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪  "The new price of eggs": The political shocks of data centers and electric bills (New York Times)

READ ON!

[FIRM NEWS]

[New Blog] Austin 2026: The New Rules of Economic Development at City Hall

Learn more about Bingham Group’s new practice — and review all of our services here: binghamgp.com/services

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

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

ℹ️ 2025 Essential Resources for Navigating the City of Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Feds signal confidence in Austin Light Rail system, part of Project Connect (Austin American-Statesman)

After years of setbacks and uncertainty, Austin’s light rail project is now one step closer to fruition.

Federal transit officials last week gave Austin Light Rail a key vote of confidence, issuing a “medium-high’’ rating in an annual funding recommendation report that keeps the project on track for a 2027 groundbreaking. The rating positions Austin to compete for a federal Capital Investment Grant expected to cover roughly half the system’s cost.

The federal mark is the latest sign of momentum for a transit plan that has struggled through years of redesigns, cost escalations and political blowback. Since Austin voters approved Project Connect in 2020 — signing off on a generational $7 billion transit overhaul and an ongoing 20% property tax increase — the light rail component has repeatedly been scaled back as projected costs ballooned. The initial 27-mile vision shrank to fewer than 10 miles, even as the price tag grew and questions mounted about how far local dollars would stretch. The Austin Transit Partnership, the entity created to build the system, has also spent years recalibrating designs amid lawsuits, legislative pushback, inflation, right-of-way challenges and pressure to deliver something close to what voters were promised.

Even with those complications, November’s rating brings ATP closer to securing about $4 billion in federal funding. The rating, the strongest overall grade FTA assigned for the 2026 fiscal year, signals that federal staff view the project as financially and technically viable… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Half-priced Uber rides aim to boost Austin's downtown business (KUT)

As downtown restaurants and bars head into what's supposed to be one of their busiest times of the year, construction isn't making it very holly jolly.

The I-35 expansion and the new high-rise projects nibble at the edges, but one project is proving to be the most disruptive of all: the years-long reconstruction of the Austin Convention Center.

Now, there's a new incentive meant to lure people back downtown: half-priced Uber rides through the holidays.

"Our public agencies have been clear with us that this construction is only going to really intensify over the next decade," said Vanessa Olson with the Downtown Austin Alliance (DAA), which is subsidizing the Uber rides. "We're testing this program and many others to see what works to make sure people can still support those downtown businesses."

During December, the DAA will pay 50% of the cost for Uber rides to and from downtown within a 30-mile radius. The maximum subsidy is $40 per ride and doesn't include the tip… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Texas’ “bathroom bill” is about to go into effect. Here’s what it does. (Texas Tribune)

Starting on Thursday, Texas will implement Senate Bill 8 — also known as the Texas Women’s Privacy Act, or more commonly known as a “bathroom bill” — aimed at restricting transgender people’s access to certain restrooms in the state.

Republicans in Texas worked for more than a decade to pass a bathroom bill like SB 8. The new law applies sex-based restrictions on those restrooms and changing rooms in public buildings, schools and universities. It also implements restrictions in prison housing, as well as family violence shelters.

Supporters of the law say it will create more secure private spaces, but opponents worry the law’s unclear guidance on how to enforce SB 8 will cause oversurveillance and public harassment. Here’s what you need to know about SB 8, what areas are affected and why the Legislature passed the new restrictions on restrooms in the state…🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas proposes hiking licensing fees for summer camps by as much as 4,000% (Texas Tribune)

In their latest effort to boost camp oversight in the wake of the deadly July 4 floods, Texas officials have proposed hiking annual licensing fees for operators by thousands of dollars and slashing the number of camp representatives on a statewide committee that advises on industry regulations.

On Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services, which regulates camps, posted a slate of new rules to the Texas Register that would go into effect next year, and among them are proposals that would increase camp licensing fees based on size and type of camps.

Currently, the start-up licensing fee is $250 for any day camp and $750 for any residential camp, such as an overnight summer camp. The yearly renewal fee currently ranges from $52 to $155 for day camps and $103 to $464 for residential camps… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Patrick wants Texas Senate to probe solar firms for alleged China ties (Austin American-Statesman)

A pair of solar companies with footprints in Texas are in the spotlight after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced that lawmakers would investigate their financial ties to China. Executives from Ontario-based Canadian Solar and Austin-based T1 Energy, which have both invested in Texas-based solar manufacturing facilities and infrastructure, will be asked to testify before the Texas Senate in early 2026, Patrick said. He cited a Fox News report published Tuesday that detailed alleged ties between the two companies and larger Chinese-backed corporations.

“Based on a new report, it appears China may have a major stake in 2 solar companies in Texas,” Patrick wrote on social media Saturday. The companies’ leaders will be called early next year for a hearing before the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce, Patrick said. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, has been the chamber’s leading lawmaker on energy issues and chairs the committee that will hold the hearings.

The Republican-led state Legislature in recent sessions has ratcheted up efforts to counter Chinese influence in the state, including passing new laws in 2023 and 2025 that Republicans said would limit foreign interference on the Texas power grid. Patrick also backed a ban, passed this year, on Chinese nationals and businesses from buying Texas land… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ "The new price of eggs": The political shocks of data centers and electric bills (New York Times)

As loyal Republicans, Reece Payton said that he and his family of cattle ranchers in Hogansville, Ga., had one thing on their minds when they cast their ballots in November for the state’s utility board — “to make a statement.” They were already irked by their escalating electric bills, not to mention an extra $50 a month levied by their local utility to cover a new nuclear power plant more than 200 miles away. But after they heard a data center might be built next to their Logos Ranch, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, they had enough of Republicans who seemed far too receptive to the interests of the booming artificial intelligence industry.

“That’s the first time I ever voted Democrat,” Mr. Payton, 58, said. Message sent. In some of Georgia’s reddest and most rural counties, Republicans crossed party lines this month and helped propel two Democrats, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson, to landslide upsets, ousting the incumbent candidates on the Georgia Public Service Commission.

No Democrat has served on the five-person commission, which regulates utilities and helps set climate and energy policy, since 2007. Across the country, Democrats have seized on rising anxiety over electricity costs and data centers in what could be a template for the 2026 midterm elections. In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger pledged during her campaign to lower energy bills and make data centers pay more. In the House of Delegates, one Democratic challenger unseated a Republican incumbent by focusing on curbing the proliferation of data centers in Loudoun County and the exurbs of the nation’s capital. In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill promised to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rates.

And in Memphis, State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who is challenging Representative Steve Cohen in a high-profile Democratic primary next year, has vowed to fight a supercomputer by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, that would be located in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Strong opposition by citizens forced the Tucson City Council in August to pull the plug on an Amazon data center slated for that Arizona city, and then in September forced Google to call off one in Indianapolis… 🟪 (READ MORE)

Have comments or questions? 📩 Contact me