🟪 Austin City Council approves financial agreement for controversial Dog's Head development (KUT)

🟪 ‘Worst possible light’: Nonprofits challenge Austin audit amid budget debate (Austin Current)

🟪 Could Austin join ‘Robin Hood’ school funding lawsuit? Why Midland is suing. (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 WilCo commissioners consider pausing justice center project to listen to resident concerns (Community Impact)

🟪 Bastrop County residents organize for data center transparency, local guardrails (Community Impact)

🟪 Democrats try to harness AI data center backlash against Republicans (Associated Press)

🟪 Trump to impose double-digit tariffs on dozens of countries (NPR)

READ ON!

🏛️ COUNCIL MEETINGS:

💰 Review the Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget documents here

🏛️ MEMO: Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget Adoption Timeline

The BG Podcast is back! Episode 269 features my conversation with former San Antonio Mayor and HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros about the Austin–San Antonio mega region. The discussion comes as the new Central Texas Alliance seeks to build consensus across 13 counties along and around the I-35 corridor.

Listen on:

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ULI Austin held its July Breakfast Wednesday morning at the Austin Central Library, gathering real estate and public sector leaders to assess the state of downtown. Downtown Austin Alliance President and CEO Davon Barbour moderated the conversation.

Representing the city's perspective, here are highlights from panelist Max Lars, Mayor Kirk Watson's senior policy advisor.

What's next: Lars becomes Watson's chief of staff August 1.

✅ Austin City Council approves financial agreement for controversial Dog's Head development (KUT)

The Austin City Council has approved a key part of a plan for a large-scale development on a vacant piece of land along the Colorado River.

Earlier this week, the city revealed that Amazon is the Fortune 100 company behind the Dog’s Head development project in Southeast Austin.

Plans for the 2,600-acre site include more than 6,000 single-family homes, 6,200 multifamily units, and millions of square feet in office, retail, industrial and hospitality space.

But the project could not move forward unless the City Council approved a tax increment reinvestment zone, or TIRZ, a financing tool that would reinvest a portion of property tax dollars into the area to support infrastructure like roads and utilities. The city used the same tool to develop the Mueller neighborhood, which used to be an airport.

The Austin City Council approved the creation of the TIRZ for the Dog's Head development on Thursday. It comes a few months after the city entered into a 45-year agreement with Endeavor Real Estate Group to build on the property… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin eyes water rules for high-use industries, data centers (Austin Current)

As Austin continues to attract water-intensive industries to fuel growth, city leaders also are trying to ensure those businesses don’t put additional strain on the city’s long-term water supply.

The City Council on Thursday approved a resolution directing the City Manager to explore a series of water conservation measures for high-water-use industries, such as data centers and semiconductor manufacturers, if they want to locate in Austin.

“There’s a lot of concern about the water supply here in Texas and how that has been impacted by the spread of data centers and other big industry,” Council Member Mike Siegel said. “Austin is looking very carefully at AI, and if you want to use a lot of water, you’ll not only have to pay your fair share for water and infrastructure, but you also have to conserve as much as possible.”

In May, the council approved a resolution directing staff to develop a new economic development strategy focused on recruiting businesses from “target industries,” including sectors that require large amounts of water to operate… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ ‘Worst possible light’: Nonprofits challenge Austin audit amid budget debate (Austin Current)

s Austin leaders weigh millions of dollars in potential cuts to social services, some local nonprofits are pushing back against a new city audit that found more than three-quarters of sampled social services contracts failed to meet one or more performance expectations outlined in their contracts.

The nonprofits involved say the audit’s methods are flawed and warn its conclusions could unfairly undermine public trust in their work. The findings also raise new questions about how Austin oversees millions of dollars in funding for the organizations that serve some of the city’s most vulnerable residents.

The report examined 25 contracts across 20 nonprofit agencies. Auditors found 67 of 151 performance expectations reviewed, or 44%, fell below their targets. Of those unmet expectations, 52 involved output measures, such as the number of clients served, while 15 involved outcome measures, such as improvements in behavior or living conditions… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Could Austin join ‘Robin Hood’ school funding lawsuit? Why Midland is suing. (Austin American-Statesman)

A West Texas school district’s lawsuit could bring the state’s public school finance system to courts for the first time in a decade. The suit asks a Travis County judge to rule on the controversial “Robin Hood” funding mechanism that funnels about half of Austin school tax revenues to the state.

Midland Independent School District trustees voted unanimously on Tuesday to file a lawsuit challenging the state’s recapture system, arguing that the formula robs local school boards of the ability to set local property taxes. The finance system collects funds from school districts with high property values — like Austin ISD — and redistributes the money to other Texas school districts that can’t collect enough locally to cover the cost of educating students.

Austin residents send about half of their local school taxes to the state, more than any other Texas public school district. This year, Austin ISD expects it will send $629.8 million of its $1.38 billion in property tax revenue to state coffers.

Filed in Travis County, the lawsuit is the first significant legal challenge to Texas’ school finance system since 2016, when the Texas Supreme Court upheld the way public schools get funded… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Former Austin Mayor Steve Adler reflects on homelessness policy, long-term solutions (CBS Austin)

Former Austin Mayor Steve Adler is looking back at his tenure and some of the most contentious decisions of his time in office, including the city’s 2019 move to lift restrictions on camping in public spaces.

In his upcoming book, “Hot Seat--Hot City: The Austin Mayor's Story,” Adler reflects on the decision and its impact on the city. He said he recognizes the change was jarring to some residents.

“It was traumatic. People woke up one day, and suddenly there were tents all over the place,” Adler said Thursday in an interview with CBS Austin.

Adler, who served as mayor from 2015 to 2023, said the policy shift was intended to bring homelessness into public view, hoping to generate support for more permanent solutions… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ WilCo commissioners consider pausing justice center project to listen to resident concerns (Community Impact)

Williamson County commissioners are considering slowing down the justice center complex project, which plans to construct a jail and courtrooms near SE Inner Loop in Georgetown, in order to prioritize community engagement.

Officials discussed the next steps of the project at a July 21 Commissioners Court meeting.

The county is currently wrapping up Phase 2 of planning for the new justice center complex, a project that began a year ago with an initial needs assessment. Although the county has purchased a site for the project, commissioners said they have not authorized final designs, contractors or any actual construction.

Commissioners are pushing to slow down the process to rebuild public trust and actively engage local residents, the school district and the city of Georgetown, Precinct 4 Commissioner Russ Boles said at the meeting… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Bastrop County residents organize for data center transparency, local guardrails (Community Impact)

With more than 5,500 acres tied to planned or potential data center development in Cedar Creek, over 100 residents packed into Bastrop’s Hampton Inn and Suites July 22 to press for transparency and local guardrails.

Organized by the League of Independent Voters of Texas and co-sponsored by the Bastrop County Republican Club, Bastrop County Democratic Party and Texas Forward Party, residents asked questions and local and state leaders offered information and advice on data centers and their potential effects.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller was a guest speaker and reiterated his call for a one-year statewide moratorium on new projects to allow time to develop regulations—warning that data center growth was outpacing state oversight… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ James Talarico rolls out plan to rein in data centers. It's a lot like Greg Abbott's. (Houston Chronicle)

Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico on Wednesday rolled out a plan to address the growing backlash to data centers — and it sounded a lot like the one pushed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Opposition to the centers has galvanized voters, especially in deep-red rural parts of the state, and has led to calls for a moratorium from several Democrats on the ticket in November. Talarico’s proposal stops short of that.

The Austin Democrat and the Republican governor — who is not running for U.S. Senate, but has sought to brand Talarico as “out of step” with Texans — are both pushing for a middle ground. “I don't know what Greg Abbott's plan is, but I'm willing to work with anybody, including the governor, to pass these common sense regulations,” Talarico said at a press conference in Austin, where he laid out his proposal. “We have to strike a balance between welcoming growth, welcoming investment, and protecting people and communities.”

Talarico and Abbott both want to repeal tax breaks that are driving the data center boom across the state. They want to require data centers to reuse water and to stop companies from passing on infrastructure costs to ratepayers in the communities where they build. The sales tax exemption for data centers was created before Abbott was elected governor in 2014, but he signed a law expanding it in 2015, well before demand boomed amid the rise of artificial intelligence.

Talarico’s plan does go a little further than Abbott’s in some ways. Perhaps most notably, Talarico says he wants to “empower local communities to decide whether they want a data center in their town.” Any changes he wants to make in the U.S. Senate will have to be at the federal level, which could be more complicated, politically. “The biggest concern I hear from communities across the state is that this is being done without their consent,” Talarico said. “They may be open to some of these projects, depending on the guardrails, depending on if demands are met. But right now, folks in the community, taxpayers, aren't getting that input, and that's what we have to change.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Toro District, others may be in doubt after judge voids 2021 election (Houston Chronicle)

A recent court ruling invalidating an amendment to the Texas Constitution could complicate Harris County’s plan for financing the Toro District and send ripples through a network of little-known taxing districts the county formed prior to the ruling. The amendment, which voters approved as Proposition 2 in 2021, was framed as giving county reinvestment zones the ability to issue debt. But some counties responded by creating these zones for the first time.

Harris County has since created four and is negotiating with the Houston Texans and Howard Hughes to form a fifth to fund infrastructure for a new practice field and surrounding development in northwest Harris County. But state District Judge Jan Soifer’s July 10 ruling in a lawsuit brought by a group of conservative organizations may frustrate those plans.

Soifer agreed with the plaintiffs’ allegation that the ballot language used to describe the amendment failed to inform voters how the zones’ investments would be paid for – namely, by issuing bonds. “Therefore,” Soifer wrote, “the ballot language of Proposition 2 … omitted a chief feature of the amendment and misled the voters.” The lawsuit was brought against the Texas Secretary of State’s Office by Texas Uniting for Reform and Freedom, Grassroots America — We the People PAC and the True Texas Project.

The organizations warned the language was misleading in a letter one of their lawyers sent state officials in August 2021, before the issue appeared on the ballot. Attorney Garrett McMillan pointed to a “nearly identical” proposal voters rejected in 2011. That proposal, he wrote, made clear that the reinvestment zones would fund projects through property taxes, unlike the 2021 measure… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Democrats try to harness AI data center backlash against Republicans (Associated Press)

When Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, began her campaign last year, candidates weren’t talking about — or hearing about — data centers that power artificial intelligence. But with barely three months until November’s contest, the perceived threat to rural life, ranchland and dwindling water supplies could become a defining issue for her long-shot challenge to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, dividing conservative rural areas that have traditionally served as a counterweight to Democrats’ urban strongholds.

The backlash to energy-guzzling server warehouses is also shaping other statewide campaigns from Arizona to Ohio to New York, and even giving Democrats a glimmer of hope in Texas, where Republicans have dominated for three decades.

“There is this little issue that I recently started hearing about that I wanted to tell you about, in case you don’t know,” Hinojosa quipped to a Democratic Party-organized crowd of about 160 seated on fold-out chairs at an Amarillo social club in Texas’ panhandle. “It’s this issue of data centers.” The crowd booed, and she went on: “They are owned by the richest men in the world. We’re all footing the bill. There are no rules. It is the wild west of data centers.”

The fast growth of massive data centers has already upended races for local offices across the country, often uniting conservatives and liberals in revolting against projects in their midst. People don’t like the secrecy surrounding the projects or the prospect of air, noise, water and light pollution. They fear electric bills going up, wells going dry and losing open space, farmland or forest.

Now the ripple effects have spread to top-of-the-ticket races, where incumbents and challengers are trying to show that they hear an angry electorate. In Ohio, Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown aired a television advertisement attacking Republican U.S. Sen. John Husted as the “face of data centers in Ohio” as people gather signatures for a statewide referendum to outright ban their construction... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump to impose double-digit tariffs on dozens of countries (NPR)

President Donald Trump is going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners just as the clock runs out Friday on stopgap levies he imposed after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court.

The United States will slap taxes of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 countries accounting for 99% of U.S. imports, charging that they have inadequately enforced bans on goods produced by forced labor.

"The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it's well past time for our trading partners to do the same," said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. "Today's action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere… 🟪 (READ MORE)