The Borderplex Report

Council puts its own travel on the record. The county still hasn’t.

City Council voted unanimously to put council and mayor travel spending on the public agenda on a regular basis — the disclosure rule Rep. Chris Canales asked for after ABC-7 found county commissioners spent nearly $234,000 on travel since FY2022. Commissioners Court has discussed a matching rule for the county, but as of Tuesday it still hadn’t voted on one.

Project Jupiter: the progress report — a year in, the first building is topped out, and the project has no power

A year after the county approved $165B in bonds, the first building is topped out and 4,400 workers are on site. But the project has no power.

The air-permit hearing set for Dec. 7 is now in doubt. The gas pipeline was rejected twice. Oracle sent a notice that lets it delay rent up to 3 years.

The county that approved the bonds 4–1 just warned of a breach 5–0 over the El Paso Electric backup deal — then Oracle walked it back.

Water still has no full public accounting. The State Engineer says 1,445 acre-feet used so far. Oracle claims under a million gallons a year.

Compare that to El Paso: the state had no say in the Meta deal. City Council approved the Chapter 380 agreement in December 2023. In New Mexico, the state is everywhere in Jupiter — the State Engineer, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the Land Commissioner.

Voters just put longtime Jupiter opponent Daisy Maldonado on the county commission with 60%.

And in Texas, the new governor promised a moratorium on new data center approvals until the Legislature passes protections — Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa takes office January 19. Already-permitted projects, like Meta’s El Paso campus, finish as planned. The freeze is on what’s next, not what’s already rising.

Updated Nov. 10: the Dec. 7 hearing was vacated the next day — see the update below.

Texas blue wave puts tens of thousands of Musk-company jobs and tens of billions in play

Texas voters elected a Democratic governor and a Democratic state House on Nov. 3. Elon Musk’s companies have tens of thousands of workers and tens of billions of dollars in projects in the state, and they will now deal with a new state government. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa has said Musk’s companies are welcome “on our terms.”

Hinojosa beat Gov. Greg Abbott by about 7 points — results not yet certified — and is the first Democrat elected Texas governor since Ann Richards in 1990. Musk was one of the biggest spenders trying to stop that outcome: about $445M nationwide this cycle, and at least $225M in Texas races alone, with estimates differing by source and by what they count. His first post after the statewide races were called: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”

The opening moves are already on the record. Hinojosa asked Texas Parks and Wildlife on Nov. 5 to take no action on a possible sale of about 1,300 acres of Boca Chica State Park land to SpaceX — in the same Nov. 5 CNN interview where she called selling the beach to Musk “just something that is almost unimaginable.” She also campaigned on a statewide pause on data center approvals until the Legislature passes protections. At Musk’s 3 largest Texas sites alone — Giga Texas at about 16,500 workers, Starbase at more than 4,000, and Starlink near Bastrop at about 1,600 — the headcount adds up to about 22,000.

The first test comes next month. On Dec. 9, the City of Starbase commission holds a public hearing on tax breaks for a proposed SpaceX gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility costing about $24 billion on about 444 acres just east of Brownsville — a Chapter 312 property tax abatement plus a related Chapter 380 agreement. The notice doesn’t give the size or length of the abatement, the plant’s generating capacity, or the size of the computing operation.