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Austin ISD Will Borrow $140 Million to Make Payroll as Its Deficit Deepens to $86 Million and Two Campuses Trigger a State Takeover Review

Austin ISD plans to borrow $140 million this fall to cover paychecks until property tax money arrives, after its own budget office told trustees the district finished last school year $86 million in the red — $67 million worse than the deficit the board adopted — and with two campuses now failing long enough to put the district in line for state intervention.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 3, 2026

Insurers Tell House Panel Texas Regulated Its Own Health Market ‘Out of Existence’

Texas health insurers told a House committee Sept. 1 that state regulations have contributed to employers moving away from the fully insured market.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 3, 2026

Oncor and LCRA Tell Regulators the Judges Got It Wrong on Two Rejected Permian Power Lines, Warning of Blackouts in Far West Texas

Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority's transmission arm filed an 81-page rebuttal Sept. 2 asking Texas utility regulators to overrule two administrative judges who recommended denying a pair of 765,000-volt power lines across Central and West Texas, arguing the judges leaned on "lay witness testimony" over the state grid operator's engineering and that denying the lines would leave Far West Texas facing forced outages of more than 2,000 megawatts.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 3, 2026

County Judges Tell Senators They Have ‘No Authority’ Over Data Centers as Industry Pledges Millions

Three data center companies told a Senate committee Sept. 1 that they cool without fresh water and will pay for rural pipelines.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 2, 2026

Texas Utilities Are Filing Their First Wildfire Plans, and the Documents Spell Out When They Would Shut Off Power

A customer of AEP Texas living in the brush country west of San Antonio could get a phone call three days before a windy afternoon warning that the lights may go out on purpose, then a second notice at 48 hours, a third at 24, and a final one somewhere between one and six hours before the power is cut.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 2, 2026

Nearly Four in Ten Texas Homesteads Now Pay No School Property Tax, Bettencourt’s County Survey Finds

The state has never published how many Texas homeowners pay nothing in school property tax.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 2, 2026

Drought Spread Across a Fifth of Texas in a Single Week, the Sharpest Jump the State Has Recorded Since 2008

Roughly 65,500 people in Johnson County were told on Aug. 28 that they may water their lawns only twice a week, and only between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m., because a reservoir system 60 miles away had run short enough for its operator to declare a drought stage.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 2, 2026

Three Big Texas Counties Set Property Tax Plans in One Week, and Each Chose a Different Way to Absorb the Squeeze

Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai told commissioners on Sept. 1 what holding the property tax rate flat will cost, and he said it out loud for the first time.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 2, 2026

Texas Quarantines a New Stretch of Crockett County a Day After Lifting Its First Two Screwworm Zones

A dog in Crockett County tested positive for New World screwworm on Aug. 31, and by the next afternoon the state veterinarian had drawn a new quarantine line around part of the county.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 2, 2026

Texas PUC Approves First of the State’s Biggest Power Lines, Overruling Judges on Landowner Notice

Texas utility regulators approved the state’s first 765,000-volt transmission lines on Aug. 28, clearing Oncor to build 424 miles of them across 30 counties, from near Glen Rose to the New Mexico line, at a cost of about $3.9 billion — and in the same orders they threw out an administrative law judges’ finding that the utility had failed to give some landowners the notice the rules require.

The Texas Dispatch · Sep 1, 2026