Public finance, economic development, and applied analysis on the Texas corridor
Texas has 254 counties, thousands of taxing entities, and an interstate that runs through the heart of it. Southbound 35 covers four things along that corridor: public finance, economic development, econometric and statistical analysis, and program evaluation. The blog serves three purposes: as an outlet for short analyses too limited in scope for a full academic paper, as a way for the author to learn about subjects he is curious about, and as a venue for research that may be useful to the people who study Texas communities and to the state and local officials who govern them.
If you watch enough golf, you’ve absorbed a piece of folk wisdom: the leader after 54 holes plays worse on Sunday. The lead shrinks, the back nine eats people alive, and somebody you’d never bet on walks off with the trophy. Commentators reach for the word choke. Players reach for the word pressure. The flip side of the same coin is clutch: the player who shows up on Sunday and plays like the moment isn’t there.
Hays CISD voters approved $968.65 million in school bonds in May 2025. Six months later, the same district asked them to raise the operating tax rate by 12 cents per $100 of valuation. They said no — 60 percent to 40 percent.
The previous two posts looked at how fast Hays County is growing and at the range of forecasts for how big it might get. Both ended on the same question that nobody in the county can dodge for much longer. Where will the water come from?
Since 2022, more than thirty PGA Tour pros have left for the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, lured by guaranteed contracts reportedly worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The complaint from those who stayed has been blunt: LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut, shotgun-start format is “exhibition golf,” and players who take the money will get rusty. The defectors say the opposite — that the lighter schedule lets them practice harder and play fresher. So who’s right?
Every March, cable news runs the same reel: ambulances on the beach, students on stretchers, a grim-faced anchor reading the latest death toll. The coverage makes spring break look like the most dangerous week on the American calendar. But is it?
If you drive south from Austin on I-35, you can feel the moment you cross into Hays County. Not because of a sign — though there is one — but because the landscape opens up. New subdivisions in various stages of completion. Warehouse pads with fresh concrete. A strip center waiting for tenants. The feeling of a place in motion — growing into something, and doing it quickly.
A note on process: posts are drafted with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic). Each individual post carries a disclosure detailing what AI assisted with. All analytical decisions, data interpretation, and editorial judgment are the author's.
