BG Reads Weekend Edition(6.1.2025)

Author

A.J. Bingham
June 01, 2025

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[TOP CLICKS OF THE WEEK]

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The Week Ahead at Austin City Hall and Weekend News below

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

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[WEEKEND NEWS]

🟪 Mayor: New zoning for taller buildings, affordable housing backfiring (Austin Business Journal)

The City Council could consider changing the rules of its programs that allow denser and taller developments in exchange for affordable housing after Mayor Kirk Watson expressed concerns regarding their impact on the community. 

In a recent post to the council's message board, Watson said the widely used Density Bonus 90 program, or DB90, has been an “unhappy experience” for many.

“As currently created, (DB90) is proving to be divisive, difficult to utilize, and ultimately too far from achieving the goal of council to provide more housing by allowing more density,” Watson said in his post. 

DB90 allows developers to build projects up to 90 feet tall with ground-floor commercial uses as long as a certain percentage of residential units are set aside at rental rates deemed affordable. The DB90 program is one of the only density bonus programs that applies citywide. 

In just the past month, developers have secured the zoning to raze and then rebuild bigger two prime site in North Austin — a longtime Ford dealership and a 1980s-style shopping center near North Lamar Boulevard and U.S. Highway 183.

DB90 was created after a similar program meant to spur vertical mixed-use density, called VMU2, was struck down by a Travis County judge in 2023. The biggest difference between the two programs is that VMU2 offered by-right entitlements if certain benchmarks were hit, while DB90 requires that every property seeking the zoning change must be approved by the City Council.  

Council members are set to vote on a resolution to allow the city to amend both the DB90 program and other density bonus programs at their June 5 meeting. The resolution also could allow the city to create a hierarchy of density bonus programs and districts. As of May 30, the resolution is being sponsored by council members Zohaib ''Zo'' Qadri, Jose ''Chito'' Vela, Jose Velasquez and Mike Siegel, in addition to the mayor… ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 Texas Legislature approves $338 billion two-year spending plan with a focus on property tax relief (Texas Tribune)

Texas lawmakers signed off Saturday on a $338 billion two-year spending plan that directs billions toward hiking teacher pay, cutting property taxes and shoring up the state’s water infrastructure, after House and Senate budget writers ironed out their differences and won approval from both chambers on their final draft.

The budget now heads to Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who is expected to verify there is enough revenue to cover the Legislature’s planned spending — the last step before the 1,056-page bill reaches Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

The spending plan doles out the money to run the state’s business for the next two years, from September through the end of August 2027. It includes the underlying funding for some of the biggest bills passed this session, much of it paid for with general revenue, Texas’ main source of taxpayer funds used to cover core services.

Lawmakers approved $149 billion in general revenue spending, with the rest drawn from federal funds and other state revenue earmarked for specific uses… ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 Bill to give political appointees more oversight over Texas universities wins final passage (Texas Tribune)

A bill that would grant political appointees unprecedented oversight of the state’s public universities heads to Gov. Greg Abbott after the two chambers in the Texas Legislature agreed on a compromise Saturday.

Other conservative-led states, including Florida and North Carolina, have already sought to influence who leads colleges and what gets taught in classrooms. Texas is poised to go even further, shifting some responsibilities traditionally held by professors to politically appointed university regents. The legislation would also create a state office with the power to investigate universities and would threaten their funding if they don’t comply with the law.

Supporters argue the measure is necessary to combat what they perceive as a liberal bias in universities and to better support the state’s workforce needs. Critics say it will undermine teaching and research.

Senate Bill 37 would create a state-level committee charged with recommending the courses that should be required for graduation. Each public university system’s board of regents — who oversee the school’s operations and are appointed by the governor — would also create committees to review curricula, which would be able to reject any course that is seen as ideologically charged or doesn’t align with workforce demands… ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 DPR Construction takes the crown as Austin's top general contractor (Austin Business Journal)

DPR Construction made a big leap from 2023 to 2024 to become the top commercial construction company in Austin based on billings. 

The company, which works on projects ranging from downtown's towering Waterline to major data center developments, reported $1.07 billion in construction billings through its Austin office in 2024 — the only firm to cross the billion-dollar threshold, according to the Austin Business Journal’s latest list of the top general contractors. DPR rose to take the top spot after reporting just $443.85 million in construction billings in 2023.

Hensel Phelps ranks No. 2 on the list this year with $840.34 million in 2024 construction billings; JE Dunn Construction Co. ranks No. 3 with $795.95 million; Bartlett Cocke General Contractors LLC ranks No. 4 with $457 million; and Ryan Companies US Inc. ranks No. 5 with $369.03 million.

Nick Moulinet, who was recently named DPR’s central region business development leader, said the booming market for data centers and machine learning AI centers has helped fuel his company's Austin growth… ✅ (READ MORE)

‘That person will absolutely become the most powerful person': LA looks for a new king (Politico)

Los Angeles is waiting for its George Washington.

Last year, voters across an area more populous than all but ten states decided to create a new office to oversee their government. Now comes the hard part: determining the scope of a position that will, by representing the nearly 10 million people of Los Angeles County, become perhaps the most powerful in American local government and immediately reshape California politics.

Now it is time to decide how much unchecked authority should be vested in an office being designed from scratch. Many of the tricky issues concern the interplay between the new executive — who will have the final say over the county’s nearly $50 billion budget and the ability to hire and fire heads of dozens of county-wide departments — and the existing Board of Supervisors, who have long held those powers for themselves.

“It’s a fundamental change to the culture of county government because it’s pulling the executive authority out of the Board of Supervisors. And the question is, how do you do that?” said Raphael Sonenshein, who headed a Los Angeles city charter reform commission in the 1990s and is now executive director of the Haynes Foundation. “People are only now beginning to think about what an important design question it is.”

Members of a 13-member task force met for the first time Friday to begin the three-year process of redrawing how the county is governed, which will also include creating an ethics commission and adding four new supervisors’ districts. But their biggest challenge revolves around setting up the county executive role in time for it to be filled by voters in November 2028 in an election that is likely to draw a slew of ambitious politicians, civic figures and business leaders from the country’s second-largest metropolitan area… ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 Trump announces plan to double tariffs on imported steel to 50% (NPR)

President Trump told a crowd at the U.S. Steel plant outside of Pittsburgh on Friday that he is doubling tariffs on imported steel, making the announcement as he celebrated a multibillion dollar deal between the iconic American steelmaker and the Japanese company Nippon Steel.

"We are going to be imposing a 25% increase. We're going to bring it from 25% to 50% the tariffs on steel into the United States of America, which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States," Trump said. "Nobody's going to get around that."

He did not say when the increase would take effect.

Trump made the announcement while touting the deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon as a "planned partnership" and a major win for American manufacturing — even as the details of what's actually in the agreement remain far from clear.

The prospect of an agreement between the two steel giants has been a matter of debate for more than a year. Former President Joe Biden and then-candidate Trump both opposed the deal during the campaign. Biden later blocked the sale in January before he left office, citing concerns about national security… ✅ (READ MORE)