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December 11, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin Mayor Kirk Watson pushes citywide performance audit ordinance (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Austin unveils new baggage system, part of $3.8B airport expansion project (KXAN)

🟪 Round Rock mayor talks water, infrastructure and more at State of the City (Community Impact)

🟪 Why Gov. Greg Abbott wants to let taxpayers decide whether cities can raise — or cut — taxes (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Texas AG probe of nearly 1,000 cities’ finances to seek violations of new property tax law (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Trump calls affordability crisis a "hoax," touts the economy ahead of midterms (NPR)

🟪 Elon Musk says DOGE was only ‘somewhat successful’ and he wouldn’t do it again (Associated Press)

READ ON!

[FIRM NEWS]

[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]

🏛️ Todauy @10AM: Austin City Council Meeting

• Agenda

• Video Link (ATXN 1)

🏛️ 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]

✅ Austin Mayor Kirk Watson pushes citywide performance audit ordinance (Austin American-Statesman)

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson on Wednesday announced a concerted push for a sweeping, citywide performance audit, urging the City Council to swiftly pass an ordinance to create an "institutionalized program for an independent, collaborative citywide review" of municipal operations aimed at improving efficiency, accountability and transparency.

“As Austin Mayor, my goal is to deliver the best city services possible and to do it living within our means,” he wrote in the latest edition of the Watson Wire. “I put Austin’s affordability first.”

Watson initially called for some type of audit program last month in a special election night edition of the Watson Wire after early returns showed voters were heavily opposed to Proposition Q, a measure that would have increased city property taxes by more than 20% to fund a menagerie of enhanced city services ranging from homelessness initiatives to park maintenance.

Watson's call for an ordinance comes as the conservative Save Austin Now PAC, which led the charge against Prop Q, is circulating a petition that would amend the city charter to require an external audit every five years if voters approve the measure in May 2026…🟪 (READ MORE)

See also → Council Message Board discussion on City Comprehensive Audit

✅ Austin unveils new baggage system, part of $3.8B airport expansion project (KXAN)

City leaders on Tuesday celebrated an early milestone in the massive Austin Bergstrom International Airport project.

The city is in the midst of its largest-ever airport expansion. It will cost around $3.8 billion and have the capacity to welcome 37 million travelers annually – nearly double the airport’s current capacity. Officials expect the expansion to wrap up by 2030. 

“Good things are happening in Austin, Texas, and our airport has to move with it,” said Austin Mayor Kirk Watson at a Wednesday morning press event. “Importantly, though, for an airport to move, baggage needs to move.”

City leaders on Tuesday premiered the new Outbound Baggage Handling System, designed to move luggage faster, reduce flight delays and support the region’s growth. The upgrade can process double the number of bags – around 4,000 an hour –  as the previous system… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Round Rock mayor talks water, infrastructure and more at State of the City (Community Impact)

Rock Mayor Craig Morgan highlighted major infrastructure upgrades, downtown redevelopment and long-term water planning during the annual State of the City address, telling residents the city is “well positioned” to manage continued growth.

Speaking before business leaders and local officials at Kalahari Resorts & Conventions in Round Rock, Morgan pointed to progress on voter-approved transportation projects and emphasized the city’s commitment to maintaining essential services as construction continues across Round Rock.

“We’re not planning for today—we’re planning for tomorrow,” said Morgan. The mayor highlighted nearly $196.4 million in transportation connections and capacity upgrades now underway across the city.

Work that includes major corridor expansions, intersection redesigns and long-planned roadway links expected to wrap up in 2026. These include expansions to Gattis School Road, Wyoming Springs Drive and Red Bud Lane… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Why Gov. Greg Abbott wants to let taxpayers decide whether cities can raise — or cut — taxes (Texas Tribune)

Gov. Greg Abbott, as part of his reelection campaign, wants to make it harder for Texas cities and counties to raise property taxes — a move that would put local governments in an even tighter financial bind as the state grows.

That goal is a key tenet of Abbott’s property tax-cut platform, the centerpiece of his 2026 campaign. Abbott has also called for eradicating school property taxes for homeowners and slowing growth in property values. Some conservative groups and lawmakers have embraced the platform, which has been met with mixed reception from tax policy experts.

Much of Abbott’s proposals are an extension of ideas lawmakers have tried in the past. In a bid to rein in city and county tax bills, lawmakers in 2019 enacted tighter limits on how much more in property taxes cities and counties can collect each year without asking voters. On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Texas Senate, announced his own plans to drive down taxes that focused on increasing tax cuts for homeowners… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas AG probe of nearly 1,000 cities’ finances to seek violations of new property tax law (Texas Tribune)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched a probe into almost 1,000 Texas cities to make sure they’re following a new state law aimed at preventing localities from unduly raising property taxes, his office said Tuesday.

The initiative is designed to enforce a new state law that says cities can’t raise more in property taxes than they did the previous year if they don’t follow financial transparency requirements set out in state law. The new law is part of a broader push by Texas Republicans to bring the state’s high property taxes to heel.

Paxton has requested financial documents and other information from a majority of the state’s 1,200 cities, his office said. Paxton did not allege any wrongdoing by the cities in the Tuesday news release.

Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Corpus Christi and Waco were among the cities named in the announcement… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Three top Alamo fundraisers quit over CEO Kate Rogers' banishment (San Antonio Express-News)

Three leaders of the Alamo’s fundraising arm have quit to protest the forced resignation of Kate Rogers as president and CEO of the Alamo Trust, the San Antonio Express-News has learned. Three of the most active fundraisers on the board of the Remember the Alamo Foundation — real estate developer Phillip P. Bakke, philanthropist Tracy Wolff and retired Air Force Gen. Donald G. Cook — have stepped down. Their departures add another layer of turmoil as the Alamo undergoes a $550 million public-private renovation and expansion amid political differences over how the 300-year history of the site — in which Native Americans, Spanish missionaries, Mexicans, Tejanos, Texas revolutionaries and enslaved people all played a role — should be depicted.

The board members’ resignations were not publicly announced, but Bakke, Wolff and Cook were removed from a Remember the Alamo Foundation web page featuring photos and biographies of the nonprofit’s 16 board members. Now, only 13 members are listed. The foundation is a tax-exempt nonprofit that raises money for the Alamo Trust, which handles day-to-day operations at the state-owned historic site under contract with the Texas General Land Office. Rogers resigned as Alamo CEO on Oct. 23 under pressure from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, who objected to social media posts by the Alamo staff and academic writings by Rogers that they deemed unacceptably “woke.”

Mounting tensions between the Alamo Trust board and state officials burst into public view on Oct. 14, when Buckingham took exception to posts on the Alamo’s official Facebook and X accounts that acknowledged Indigenous Peoples' Day. A dozen states and some cities recognize the day instead of or in tandem with Columbus Day. Buckingham criticized the Alamo posts as “woke” and demanded an investigation into who wrote and published them. "This is frankly unacceptable and it has been deleted," Buckingham wrote on X, adding: "Woke has no place at the Alamo."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump calls affordability crisis a "hoax," touts the economy ahead of midterms (NPR)

In the spring of last year, then-President Joe Biden tried to convince skeptical voters that the struggling economy was healthy. Then-candidate Donald Trump seized on the moment and vowed to lower prices for American consumers, beating his eventual Democratic rival Kamala Harris in part with a winning economic message.

Now it's President Trump who's trying to persuade the public that the state of the economy is sound, after prices rose 3% in the 12 months ending in September and with consumers spending less on big-ticket items.

Betsey Stevenson, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, says making that argument could be a tall order in the face of rising costs for a number of goods and services.

"My personal takeaway from the experience we had [in 2024] was that you can't tell people that prices aren't up when they're up," she said.

While the prices of some items such as gasoline have fallen on Trump's watch, the overall cost of living has continued to climb. For example, grocery costs are up 2.7% for the year ending in September and electricity costs have jumped more than 5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ New York Times, after Trump post, says it won’t be deterred from writing about his health (Associated Press)

The New York Times, attacked by President Donald Trump for reporting about his physical condition, said on Wednesday that it wouldn’t be deterred by “false and inflammatory language” that distorts the role of a free press.

The president had posted on his Truth Social platform that he believed it was “seditious, perhaps even treasonous” for the Times and other media outlets to do “FAKE” reports on his health.

“They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it,” Trump wrote.

The 79-year-old president wouldn’t specify, but the newspaper has posted a handful of reports about his health in recent weeks. In a Nov. 25 story headlined “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office,” reporters examined Trump’s public and travel schedules to conclude Americans were seeing less of him than they were used to.

A story on Dec. 2, accompanied by a video, said that Trump “appeared to be fighting sleep” during a Cabinet meeting that day… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Elon Musk says DOGE was only ‘somewhat successful’ and he wouldn’t do it again (Associated Press)

Mega billionaire Elon Musk, in a friendly interview with his aide and conservative influencer Katie Miller, said his efforts leading the Department of Government Efficiency were only “somewhat successful” and he would not do it over again.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who also owns the social media platform X, still broadly defended President Donald Trump’s controversial pop-up agency that Musk left in the spring before it shuttered officially last month. Yet Musk bemoaned how difficult it is to remake the federal government quickly, and he acknowledged how much his businesses suffered because of his DOGE work and its lack of popularity.

“We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” he told Miller, who once worked as a DOGE spokeswoman charged with selling the agency’s work to the public.

When Miller pressed Musk on whether he would do it all over again, he said: “I don’t think so. ... Instead of doing DOGE, I would have, basically, built ... worked on my companies.”... 🟪 (READ MORE)

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