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Presented By

November 25, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin 2026: The New Rules of Economic Development at City Hall (Bingham Group)

🟪 Petition drive to put audit of Austin on ballot begins after city council approves budget (CBS Austin)

🟪 Federal funding cuts hurting Austin/Travis County Food Plan implementation (KVUE)

🟪 Austin parks brace for maintenance cuts as budget slashed by $5.2M (KVUE)

🟪 Inside Austin, the Texas city that prides itself on staying weird (National Geographic)

🟪 Texas data center expansion raises blackout risk during extreme winter weather (CNBC)

🟪 Why Dems are bullish in Texas — with or without a redraw (Politico))

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]

✅ Petition drive to put audit of Austin on ballot begins after city council approves budget (CBS Austin)

A coalition led by the political group Save Austin Now has launched a petition drive to put an external audit on the May 2026 ballot. At a news conference Thursday morning, the organization’s co-founder, Matt Mackowiak, said signature collection is underway.

“We have about 10 weeks to collect 25,000 or so valid signatures of city residents,” Mackowiak said. “We’re excited about this opportunity to bring transparency and accountability to the City of Austin.”

Organizers argue that a city the size of Austin should undergo regular external audits and say the proposed process would be fully independent. Former Travis County Judge Bill Aleshire told reporters the measure is intended to remove political influence from financial reviews. “It will not be something that the politicians on the City Council or even the city manager can control,” he said. “The outside independent contractor will be required in the contract to guarantee that they will find sufficient savings to cover the cost of their services.” Save Austin Now and its allies cite an audit done by the city of Houston, which they say cost about $500,000, but saved Houston $120 million… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Federal funding cuts hurting Austin/Travis County Food Plan implementation (KVUE)

Leaders say federal funding cuts are making it tougher to implement the Austin/Travis County Food Plan.

Austin City Council and Travis County Commissioners both passed it, the region’s first-ever comprehensive food plan, unanimously in October 2024.

The food plan lays out nine goals and 61 strategies to tackle hunger and create a more sustainable food system.

About 18% of households in Austin lack reliable access to affordable, nutritious food, according to city staff.

In a Nov. 20 memo to the mayor and council, Zach Baumer, director of Austin Climate Action & Resilience, said the city is already seeing the impact of fewer federal dollars... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin parks brace for maintenance cuts as budget slashed by $5.2M (KVUE)

Some Austin city departments are figuring out what to do next after having their budgets slashed. 

On Thursday, the Austin City Council approved the amended budget for the next fiscal year. The city had to revise the budget after voters rejected Proposition Q, which would have generated $110 million each year.

One of the most significant impacts falls on the city's Parks and Recreation Department, which will operate with $5.2 million less than originally budgeted. City officials say the department will likely need to reduce staffing and cut back on resources that are typically used for routine park maintenance. That could mean fewer employees available to clean restrooms, mow grass, empty trash cans and repair damaged play structures – tasks already strained by longstanding understaffing.

Joy Casnovsky – the chief mission officer for the nonprofit Austin Parks Foundation, a group that works closely with the Parks and Recreation Department – said the cuts only deepen an existing gap. She noted that Austin’s parks system has been chronically underfunded for years, mirroring a trend seen in cities across the U.S… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Inside Austin, the Texas city that prides itself on staying weird (National Geographic)

‘Keep Austin weird’. You’re bound to see the city’s slogan within a day of touching down in the Texan capital. Whether on a sticker, a mural or someone’s T-shirt, it appears as if summoned to bring visitors on board. After all, Austinites are proud of their home just the way it is — a little bit wacky but with a whole lotta heart.

While the skyscrapered Downtown area has been transformed in the past decade — this was, until 2024, the fastest-growing US city for 12 consecutive years — Austin’s managed the near-impossible feat of preserving its free-spirited, rebellious vibe. Here, tech entrepreneurs wear cowboy boots, maverick diners with neon signs offer playful takes on classic barbecue, and the Texas State Capitol stands just blocks from psychedelic murals and food truck parks.

This youthful energy comes in large part from the sprawling University of Texas campus and a thriving start-up culture. The latter has earned the city one of its many monikers, Silicon Hills. Austin’s also been known as the ‘live music capital of the world’, a title that’s still honoured in the city’s few remaining honky-tonks, as well as vintage record shops… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ IHOP site with big potential heads to foreclosure auction (Austin Business Journal)

Over the past decade, downtown Austin’s Rainey Street has undergone an incredible transformation, and while much of the district has been redeveloped, there is still at least one prime opportunity for investors to swoop in and build something big.

The Rainey Street Historic District was a hub of bungalows, bars and late-night entertainment during the 2010s, but an unprecedented level of construction in the years since saw those bungalows sprout into sky-high hotels, condos and apartment buildings.

Now, as most of the construction in the once-sleepy downtown district is nearing an end, it will be one of the densest in the city when all is said and done. About 7,500 residents will live in what is officially called the Rainey Street Historic District, according to previous reporting. When accounting for hotel guests, the district will serve roughly 10,000 people… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ New luxury commuter vans will connect Austin to other Texas cities (CultureMap Austin)

Austinites now have a new way to hop between cities, and it comes with Wi-Fi, leather seats, and a guaranteed Buc-ee’s stop. On November 17, mobility startup Shutto launched its luxury van service connecting Austin, San Antonio, and Houston.

Bookings are now available Monday through Saturday with departure times in the morning and evening. One-way fares range from $47-$87, positioning Shutto in a similar lane to Dallas-based Vonlane, currently only offering Austin to Dallas-For Worth and Houston rides.

Unlike other regional transit options, Shutto builds Texas road-trip culture into every journey. Each route includes a pit stop at Buc-ee’s pit stop so riders can stock up on kolaches, Beaver Nuggets, and drinks… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Texas data center expansion raises blackout risk during extreme winter weather (CNBC)

The rapid expansion of data centers in Texas is driving electricity demand higher during the winter, compounding the risk of supply shortfalls that could lead to blackouts during freezing temperatures. The Lone Star state is attracting a huge amount of data center requests, driven by its abundant renewable energy and natural gas resources as well as its business friendly environment.

OpenAI, for example, is developing its flagship Stargate campus in Abilene, about 150 miles west of Dallas-Forth Worth. The campus could require up to 1.2 gigawatts of power, the equivalent of a large nuclear plant. The North American Electric Relibaility Corporation warned this week that data centers’ round-the-clock energy consumption will make it more difficult to sustain sufficient electricity supply under extreme demand conditions during freezing temperatures like catastropic Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

“Strong load growth from new data centers and other large industrial end users is driving higher winter electricity demand forecasts and contributing to continued risk of supply shortfalls,” NERC said of Texas in an analysis published Tuesday. Texas faces elevated risk during extreme winter weather, but the state’s grid is reliable during normal peak demand, NERC said. During Uri, demand spiked for home heating in response to the freezing temperatures at the same time power plants failed in large numbers due to the same weather. Texas grid operator ERCOT ordered 20 gigawatts of rolling blackouts to prevent the system from collapsing, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report.

The majority of the power plants went offline ran on natural gas. It was the “largest manually controlled load shedding event in U.S. history” resulting 4.5 million people losing power for several days. At least 210 people died during the storm. Most of the fatalities were connected to the outages and included cases of hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and medical conditions exacerbated by freezing termperatures, according to FERC… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Head of Texas’ largest business organization accused of sexual assault in lawsuit (Texas Tribune)

An unidentified woman accused Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Texas Association of Business, of sexually harassing and assaulting her before retaliating against her through his perch atop the powerful business group when she rejected his overtures, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Travis County.

The woman, identified in her court filing as “Jane Doe,” was described on social media by her attorney, Tony Buzbee, as the founder and executive director of Texas Venture Alliance, an advocacy group for startups and entrepreneurs. She is seeking more than $10 million in damages.

The lawsuit alleges that Hamer pursued the woman using his status as head of the Texas Association of Business, or TAB, offering to help advance the woman’s advocacy group and connect her with important people. Hamer also serves as chairman of the Texas Venture Alliance, according to the group’s website, and the two organizations partnered in September 2024 to launch an initiative promoting entrepreneurship in Texas.

In a statement, TAB Board of Directors Chair Bill Jones said the organization was aware of the lawsuit and was putting Hamer on administrative leave “while it conducts a full internal investigation.” Jones added that Megan Mauro, TAB’s vice president and chief of staff, would serve as the group’s interim CEO… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Why Dems are bullish in Texas — with or without a redraw (Politico)

The fate of the map Texas Republicans drew in the hopes of tipping next year’s midterm elections in their favor is still up in the air after a back-and-forth week of court decisions. But Democrats in the state aren’t holding their breath to find out: Instead, they’re positively bullish about their chances — on Republicans’ terms or not.

“I think you’re going to see South Texas turn completely blue next cycle,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez — the South Texas Democrat who represents one of the gerrymandered districts that rank among the GOP’s top targets — told Playbook in an exclusive interview. “We believe, like, on Latino buyer’s remorse alone, we can flip these seats,” said one national Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak freely.

Those Latino voters — many of whom broke for President Donald Trump in 2024 — are the key. “If they were that confident that Latino voters were going to stay with them in the midterms, they wouldn’t have taken 60,000 Latinos out of my congressional district,” Gonzalez said. He’s confident he can keep his seat — even if he’s running within the GOP’s lines: “This is just such a bad year for them.” When Trump launched the call heard ’round Truth Social supporting plans for Texas to redraw its maps, the GOP’s gambit quickly revealed plans to cement the significant inroads the party made with Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley.

It laid bare just how pivotal the coalition was to the margins of MAGA’s victory in 2024. And it singled out three majority Latino South Texas districts — the 15th, 28th and Gonzalez’s 34th — as prime pickup targets. To Gonzalez, it’s not hard to see why the GOP is so eager to seize an opportunity in his district. “I still believe that especially Tejano Latinos are more conservative and are more likely to vote split-ticket, and more likely to vote Republican than other places in the state,” he told Playbook. His district is 77 percent Latino — it voted for Trump by over 10 points last year, but also reelected Gonzalez over his Republican challenger Mayra Flores… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Will technology provide a boost to truck drivers — or will it replace them? (NPR)

The American economy depends on truckers. Their big rigs ferry food, fuel and countless other goods around the country. But it's also a dangerous and exhausting job, simultaneously stressful and monotonous.

"I say it's the last honest job," says Aaron Isaacs, a truck driver in California. "Because you come out here and you earn your money."

Technology is promising to transform this industry. New driver-assistance features are meant to make the job safer and less demanding. But some companies are taking technology a step farther, and piloting fully autonomous trucks that replace drivers altogether.

So drivers like Isaacs want to know: Will technology make their jobs easier, or take them away?… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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