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- BG Reads // May 21, 2025
BG Reads // May 21, 2025
A.J. Bingham
May 21, 2025
Presented By
✅ Today's BG Reads include:
📉🏛️ Elon Musk’s pullback from politics comes after his last big investment was a flop (Associated Press)
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ City Memo
May 20:
May 19:
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[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ Council split on I-35 cap plans for Central Austin ahead of initial funding deadline (Community Impact)
Austin officials are closing in on a plan to fund public amenity decks atop I-35 in Central Austin, and on May 22 will decide which foundations for future highway "caps" the city should pay for.
Miles of I-35 will be widened and lowered through the Texas Department of Transportation's multibillion dollar Capital Express Central project. The expansion has faced local opposition during its development, leading some to support plans for a series of caps, or amenity decks built on top of the sunken roadway to reconnect areas the interstate has long separated.
City Council has been considering whether to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on decks while Austin faces financial constraints—and the possible loss of a federal grant for the largest proposed cap spanning Cesar Chavez-Fourth streets.
A TxDOT deadline means council members must at least decide how much to spend on roadway infrastructure for any future caps before June, and they remained split on a preferred approach ahead of that vote… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ A proposed apartment demolition has some questioning Austin affordable housing program (KUT)
A city program meant to ensure affordable housing is built into new developments is facing criticism for its potential to displace more than 200 residents already living in affordable units in a West Austin complex. Now, they’re asking the city council to reconsider the proposal from the property owner.
Density Build 90, also known as DB90, was created in February 2024 with the intention of creating different levels of affordable housing in places where it’s needed, including along commercial and transit corridors. The program allows developers to build taller and denser apartment complexes as long as a percentage of the apartments are offered at an affordable rate. But housing advocates argue the program has gaps that can actually further displace residents and destroy existing affordable housing, including what exists at Acacia Cliffs.
There, the property owner is proposing a project that would replace all 290 units with up to 700, but, as of now, there is no guarantee that all current residents would have income-restricted housing available to them at the redeveloped complex. The city council is set to vote on the zoning case on Thursday… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Elon Musk confirms Tesla plan for robotaxis on Austin roads in June (NBC News)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company will have robotaxis on the streets of Austin, Texas, by the end of June.
In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin debut.
Musk said a Tesla robotaxi service will start with about 10 vehicles in Austin, and rapidly expand to thousands of vehicles should the launch go well with no incidents.
Since 2016, Musk has been promising Tesla investors, customers and fans that the company is about a year away from delivering a self-driving car that’s capable of transporting passengers safely without human interventions, or a human at the steering wheel.
“It’s prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well and then scale it up,” Musk said.
To start, Tesla has said its robotaxis will be Model Y vehicles equipped with a forthcoming version of FSD (full self driving) known as FSD Unsupervised… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Austin’s reign as a tech hub might be coming to an end (Wall Street Journal)
Nearly five years after Austin, Texas, became a darling of the tech industry, luring companies out of California with the promise of lower taxes and a better quality of life, the city is now bleeding tech talent that is flowing back to the coasts.
A new report from venture-capital firm SignalFire shows that in 2024 Big Tech employment declined 1.6% in Austin, and startup employment fell 4.9%. Tech employment in Dallas and Houston also declined, along with cities like Denver and Toronto. Tech employment grew, on the other hand, in New York and San Francisco.
It is a shift from five years ago, when Texas seemed like a growing Sunbelt beacon for tech, luring companies like Tesla, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle from California, and inspiring a number of remote tech workers and startups to follow them. But many of those companies have since laid off workers and Oracle actually relocated from Texas to Nashville, Tenn.
“I think that promise was never realized,” said Asher Bantock, SignalFire’s head of research. “This idea that it would become a new startup hub didn’t materialize.”
Return-to-office requirements combined with the burgeoning artificial-intelligence industry centralizing in Silicon Valley drew workers back West, while Austin’s fluctuating living costs and outdated infrastructure left new transplants frustrated, Bantock said.
Gabriel Farid Guerra said he was extremely underwhelmed after moving to Austin from New York in 2022. Working a completely remote job at the time, he said he signed a one-year lease in the city, chasing the idea that it was “the new, booming U.S. tech hub.”
Compared with New York and San Francisco, he said, tech events were harder to find, the quality of events was lower and opportunities for new roles were sparser. Public transit also left something to be desired, he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Austin winds up to make pitch for Major League Baseball (Austin Business Journal)
If there's an opportunity to bring a team here, you can trust Austin will be a part of it. So will others like Salt Lake City, Nashville, Portland and Charlotte. Local stakeholders are maneuvering to be part of the conversation.
"If you look at Austin today, could it support a team? I think under the right economics, yes, it could support a team. Does that mean it will be the favorite child in an expansion process? I don't know," said Reid Ryan, CEO of the triple-A Round Rock Express and Ryan Sports & Entertainment.
The Express is celebrating 25 years playing at Dell Diamond. When Ryan — whose dad, baseball legend and now local resident Nolan Ryan — and others brought them to Round Rock, the region was among the biggest markets without a professional sports team. He said it's now turning into the MLB market they once envisioned.
But while he feels "that Austin would have as good a shot as anybody" at another team, Reid Ryan believes that it's not something on the table "as of right now." He would know more than most, as he has sat on boards for the major and minor leagues and stays in contact with MLB leadership.
"I feel good because we're a growth market. I feel good because we now have supported double-A and triple-A baseball for 25 years. I feel good because there are large companies that have relocated here, and it takes a lot of money when you're playing 81 baseball games from the community to support a club with tickets and suites and premium areas and all those kind of things," he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)
[TEXAS NEWS]
✅ Texas businesses feel the pinch from Trump’s tariffs, Fed survey finds (Texas Tribune)
Uncertainty spurred by President Donald Trump’s trade policies is having a chilling effect on Texas businesses — a majority of which say consumers will ultimately pay the price of higher tariffs.
Nearly 60% of Texas business owners say the Trump administration’s back-and-forth on tariffs, a tax on imported goods, has already harmed their business, recent survey results by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas show.
The constant change in policies has made it more difficult for businesses to plan ahead, forcing them to put off hiring and investing.
“Tariffs keep changing, so it's hard to make decisions right now,” one business owner told the Dallas Fed.
Once those tariffs are in full swing, a majority of business owners said they expect the new levies to bite into profits, raise costs for businesses, and harm their business in the long run. More than 75% said they would pass increased costs from tariffs on to the consumer. Most said they’d do so within three months of tariffs taking effect.
The April survey results come from the Dallas Fed, an arm of the Federal Reserve System. The Dallas Fed regularly surveys hundreds of Texas business owners across a range of industries to gauge their feelings about the economy, their business outlook and what effects policies have on their business… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Another big tax cut for Texas homeowners appears imminent (Texas Tribune)
Texas homeowners are one step closer to a bigger tax break after the state House gave unanimous preliminary approval to a set of legislative proposals Tuesday.
House members advanced bills aimed at giving homeowners relief on the property taxes they pay toward school districts, the biggest chunk of a property owner’s tax bill. Senate Bill 4 by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican, would change the state’s homestead exemption, which reduces how much of a home’s value can be taxed to pay for public schools, from $100,000 to $140,000.
Senate Bill 23, another Bettencourt proposal, would raise a separate homestead exemption for homeowners who are older or have disabilities from $10,000 to $60,000.
Both bills — key priorities for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Texas Senate — must come back before the House on Wednesday for a final vote. The Senate will have to sign off on changes the House made to the bills before they head to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Is it law yet? See how far some of the most consequential bills have made it in the 2025 Texas Legislature (Texas Tribune)
Texas lawmakers filed thousands of bills during the 2025 legislative session. However, most of those bills won’t become law. Lawmakers will spend the final weeks before the session ends on June 2 trying to push through their priorities. They will also try to stop certain bills from going through by delaying votes and letting them miss key deadlines. If a bill fails, it might still be revived as an amendment to other legislation. Most new laws take effect Sept. 1... 🟪 (READ MORE)
[US and World News]
✅ U.S. drillers say peak shale has arrived (Wall Street Journal)
President Trump, who promised to uplift oil and gas, is set to preside over a decline in shale production. Drillers that made the U.S. the world’s top oil producer say they are hitting the brakes to weather a period of low crude prices and that the gusher has likely peaked. Some of the largest producers, including Diamondback Energy, recently told investors that they would be spending less this year and plan to drop rigs.
The U.S. is on track to see crude oil production modestly increase in 2025—in part because of growth in fields offshore—before declining next year by 1% to 13.33 million barrels a day, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. That would mark the first year-on-year decrease in roughly a decade, outside the Covid-19 pandemic. “We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production at current commodity prices,” Travis Stice, chief executive of Permian driller Diamondback, said in a letter to shareholders last week.
Trump had promised that his administration would bring a new dawn for America’s frackers by killing regulations and allowing them to build new pipelines. But even before he took office, U.S. oil production was on track to flatten out and fall by the end of the decade. Now, the upheaval in the global economy induced by his tariffs, coupled with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies’ decision to pump more oil, have likely compressed that timeline, crude-oil CEOs say.
The disruption has been most notable in the Permian Basin, the country’s biggest oil field. Oil prices have fallen to $62.49 a barrel, down about 13% since Trump’s early April tariff blitz. That price is roughly equivalent to about $45 in 2015 dollars—below the average price that sent the oil industry into a painful downturn that year. “On an inflation-adjusted basis, current prices are at amongst the lowest they’ve ever been,” Paul McKinney, CEO of Permian driller Ring Energy, said in an interview. Prices should be around $85 a barrel to encourage companies to drill, he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)
✅ Elon Musk’s pullback from politics comes after his last big investment was a flop (Associated Press)
Wisconsin could go down as billionaire Elon Musk’s last big spend on a political campaign.
And it was a flop.
Musk, the richest person in the world, said Tuesday that he would be spending less on political campaigns. The announcement came as Musk is stepping back from his role in the Trump administration, saying he will spend more time focused on his businesses, and just seven weeks after the candidate he backed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race lost by 10 percentage points.
Democrats in the swing state said Musk’s comments show that a party-led effort in this spring’s election, dubbed “ People vs. Musk, ” succeeded in making Musk and his money “toxic.”
“The people have won,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler. “The biggest funder in Republican politics is taking his toys and going home.”
Brandon Scholz, a retired longtime Republican strategist in the state, said that at least in Wisconsin, “after that court race he deserves to be labeled as toxic.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)
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