BG Reads // December 17, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
December 17, 2025

faustin a

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www.binghamgp.com

December 17, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Tourism taxes tapped to fund Austin homeless services; millions generated amid convention center closure (Community Impact)

🟪 Austin home prices leveled off in 2025. They could go down in the year ahead. (KUT)

🟪 Austin Energy launches $735 million plan to boost power reliability (CBS Austin)

🟪 Austin Convention Center "on time and on budget" for late 2028 opening (CBS Austin)

🟪 Austin PAC sues city, claiming unlawful rejection of convention center petition (KVUE)

🟪 Texans can use school vouchers for pre-K, but the pool of families who qualify is limited (Texas Tribune)

🟪 CEOs are learning to live with Trump’s turn to state capitalism (Wall Street Journal)

READ ON!

[FIRM NEWS]

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[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

CMO Executives and Advisors_July 2025.pdf519.20 KB • PDF File

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Tourism taxes tapped to fund Austin homeless services; millions generated amid convention center closure (Community Impact)

Nearly $1 million in local tourism revenue was directed toward homeless services this fall, representing the first seeding of a stand-alone reserve for Austin's homelessness response. That financing comes as widening tourism promotion efforts during the Austin Convention Center's redevelopment show strong early returns.

"If you look no further than this most recent budget, we all know we don’t have enough funding to support a lot of critical services, homelessness included. And so we need to find other ways to pay for this," council member Ryan Alter, who first proposed the homelessness endowment, said in an interview. "By leveraging visitor taxes like we’re doing here, we are allowing for that critical work to be done without increasing our reliance on property taxpayers.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin home prices leveled off in 2025. They could go down in the year ahead. (KUT)

Buyers and sellers should expect more of the same heading into 2026, according to market research shared by the Austin Board of Realtors.

Vaike O'Grady, a market research advisor with the Austin Board of Realtors, said the market has started to cool a bit, meaning prices are continuing to drop. That comes after years of volatility that included high mortgage interest rates and swings in home prices.

“Overall the market didn't really suffer on the pricing side, which is good and bad,” she said. “Sellers are happy that they are getting what they are asking for if they are pricing it correctly, but it doesn't make it easier for buyers. However, inventory is up and that signals to me that we probably will see pricing softening as we enter the first part of 2026.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin Energy launches $735 million plan to boost power reliability (CBS Austin)

Austin Energy has unveiled a comprehensive 10-year, $735 million Electric System Resiliency Plan aimed at enhancing infrastructure and reducing power outages. The initiative, already underway, promises significant improvements for customers as crews implement the upgrades.

David Tomczyszyn, Vice President of Electric System Engineering and Technical Services at Austin Energy, emphasized the plan's goal: "A resiliency plan is keeping the lights on even when things get tough." He added, "We're looking to make the biggest difference in the community to as many customers as possible as fast as possible."

The plan includes inspecting 8,000 poles, reinforcing circuits and power lines, replacing 40 segments of underground cables, and upgrading technology to swiftly detect faults and restore power… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin Convention Center "on time and on budget" for late 2028 opening (CBS Austin)

“We are on schedule and on budget. We are, they are probably not going to want me to say this, but we are a little ahead of schedule right now,” said Katy Zamesnik, Acting Deputy Director with the Austin Convention Center.

That is good news for downtown hotels that are struggling through the almost four-year construction project.

“If we look at some of the hotel revenue month-to-month and year-over-year since the closure, some of our hotels have seen double-digit drops in revenue,” said Wesley Lucas with Visit Austin. “There's been a decline in business. There has been a downturn, especially for that Sunday through Thursday business, which is when our meetings and convention business typically takes place.”

The decline in business bolsters the importance of smaller spaces like the Palmer Events Center. It is similar in size to the event space available at the Fairmont, JW Marriott, and Hilton hotels.

“We have absolutely seen an uptick in the midweek business at Palmer,” said Zamesnik… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin PAC sues city, claiming unlawful rejection of convention center petition (KVUE)

A local political action group fighting against the plan to revamp Austin's downtown convention center is now suing the city.

Austin United PAC claims Austin's city clerk unlawfully rejected the group's efforts to get the convention center project on the May ballot. PAC leaders want to stop the project because of how much it costs.

While the city has put the price tag on the convention center project at $1.6 billion, Austin United PAC leaders say the long-term cost will be around $5.6 billion. They argue this project is too big to not get approval from voters.

Demolition of the old convention center started in May and the building is gone, making room for a facility that's set to be about double the size. Construction is set to last until at least spring of 2029.

PAC leaders say they submitted 25,000 signatures to the clerk's office in October to get this on the May ballot. In November, the clerk's office ruled their petition invalid, saying after verification, they were about 500 signatures short of the 20,000 they needed.

The clerk's office said it reviewed 25% of the signatures, as is allowed under state law, to make that decision… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Tesla robotaxis now test driving in Austin without humans on board (KXAN)

Tesla robotaxis have been navigating Austin streets for the last six months or so, with “Tesla Safety Monitors” on board. Now, the robotaxis are operating without anyone inside.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X over the weekend, confirming that the autonomous vehicles are now driving around with no occupants.

“Testing is underway with no occupants in the car,” Musk said in the post, which was in response to a post by user DogeDesigner that showed one of the vehicles operating with no one inside… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Texans can use school vouchers for pre-K, but the pool of families who qualify is limited (Texas Tribune)

Final rules for Texas’ private school voucher program recently clarified that families interested in sending their children to private pre-K could receive an estimated $10,800 per year, the same amount designated for most other participants. 

But the benefit may not radically transform Texas’ early childhood learning landscape, as the students eligible for private pre-K services through the program will be limited to those who already qualify for free public pre-K.

The state law that created the program earlier this year established that virtually any school-age child can apply for an education savings account, a form of vouchers that will allow families to access public taxpayers’ dollars to fund their children’s private or home-school education. But a lesser-known part of the law also granted certain families the option to use state funding to send their children to an accredited private pre-K provider as long as they do not simultaneously attend a public program… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Greg Abbott details plan to turn Harris County ‘dark red' in 2026 (Houston Chronicle)

Gov. Greg Abbott is prepared to pour $25 million into his effort to turn Harris County — a Democratic stronghold he lost by 10 percentage points in 2022 — “dark red” as he seeks a record fourth term in office, according to details of the plan shared with Hearst Newspapers. As part of that, the Texas Republican is planning to target House Democrats there with messaging on crime, bail restrictions and property taxes, key planks of his reelection pitch.

The governor recruited Republican candidates to run in every state House seat in the county, including some where the GOP has not had a candidate on the ballot in years. And he’s hired a consultant based in Houston to help coordinate their efforts. House District 135, an open seat being vacated by state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, who is running for Texas Railroad Commission; House District 137, held by state Rep. Gene Wu since 2013; House District 140, held by state Rep. Armando Walle since 2009; House District 143, held by state Rep. Ana Hernandez since 2005; House District 144, held by state Rep. Mary Ann Perez since 2017; House District 148, held by state Rep. Penny Morales Shaw since 2021; House District 149, held by state Rep. Hubert Vo since 2005.

It is a lofty goal for the governor, who has not won the county since his first gubernatorial run in 2014. And it comes as Republicans are expected to be largely playing defense amid a midterm backlash against President Donald Trump, who drew just 46% of the vote in Harris County last year. “You want to rally your base, but to say they’re going to make Harris County ‘dark red’ — I think that’s a very ambitious plan,” said Renee Cross, senior director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston.

“I honestly don’t see it.” But the investment from the governor’s campaign speaks to how serious it is taking the challenge. Abbott has about $90 million in his campaign account and is planning to spend more than a quarter of it in Harris County. “The effort is county-wide to impact every race,” said Dave Carney, Abbott’s longtime political adviser. “We plan to compete for every voter.” The push comes after Republicans made some gains in 2024. The 46% of the county vote Trump won last year was up from 43% in 2020 and 42% in 2016. The GOP, meanwhile, won 10 judicial seats last year, its strongest showing at the courthouse in a decade… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff, criticizes Bondi and opines on Trump in Vanity Fair (Associated Press)

Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump’s understated but influential chief of staff, criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and offered an unvarnished take on her boss and those in his orbit in interviews published Tuesday in Vanity Fair that sent the West Wing into damage control.

The startlingly candid remarks from Wiles, the first woman to ever hold her current post, included describing the president as someone with “an alcoholic’s personality,” and Vice President JD Vance as a calculating “conspiracy theorist.” The observations from Wiles, who rarely speaks publicly given the behind-the-scenes nature of her job running the White House, prompted questions about whether the chief of staff might be on her way out.

Wiles pushed back after the piece’s publication, describing it as a “hit piece” that lacked context, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the “entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ CEOs are learning to live with Trump’s turn to state capitalism (Wall Street Journal)

Last week Nvidia finally got permission to sell one its most advanced semiconductor chips to China. The catch: The federal government will take 25% of the revenue from those sales. The Nvidia deal says something important about the relationship between business and government under President Trump. His regular intrusions into the boardroom—taking equity stakes, revenue slices or a “golden share”; prodding companies to lower prices or sell drugs through a federal website—are a sort of state capitalism, in which the state doesn’t necessarily own companies, but uses its substantial leverage to steer their behavior.

State capitalism is a two-way street. Many businesses, by aligning themselves with Trump’s agenda, elicit better treatment—in their ability to sell to China, the tariffs they pay, how they are regulated, and what mergers are allowed. In other words, state capitalism doesn’t just serve the interests of the state, but of favored capitalists.

Nvidia is, in effect, paying for a license that used to be free, but it hasn’t objected. After all, it’s getting access to a lucrative market that would otherwise be off-limits. In August, shortly after Trump first proposed a 15% cut, chief executive Jensen Huang told an interviewer: “Whatever it takes to get it approved for us to be able to sell in China, is fine with us.”

Whether this cozy relationship between the state and selected capitalists is good for the country is another question. State capitalism is neither socialism, in which the government owns the means of production, or laissez-faire capitalism. It’s more of a hybrid, variants of which have long been commonplace outside the U.S. Once popular in Japan and Western Europe, it remains prominent in China, Russia and other countries to varying degrees. In the U.S., taking stakes in companies or commandeering their production was once limited to wars or emergencies such as the financial crisis and Covid. Trump has made it standard practice. “I think we should take stakes in companies,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal last week. “Now, some people would say that doesn’t sound very American. Actually, I think it is very American.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ After outcry over prices, FIFA to sell $60 tickets for the World Cup — with a catch (NPR)

FIFA said on Tuesday it plans to sell $60 tickets for each of the 104 games of the 2026 World Cup — an announcement that comes after an outcry over prices for the tournament that will be held next summer across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

"Fans of the national teams that have qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026 will benefit from a dedicated ticket pricing tier, which has been designed to make following their teams on football's greatest stage more affordable," FIFA said in a statement.

But these tickets — called "supporter entry tier tickets" by FIFA — will only be available to supporters of qualified teams and are limited in quantity… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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