Travis County Allows Mystery (Samsung?) Project to Seek Tax Incentives

The Travis County administrative building at 700 Lavaca (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Last week the Travis County Commis­sioners Court voted to authorize an economic incentive agreement application for a development referred to by county officials only as the "Silicon Silver Project." The intended recipient will be made public when and if the county receives its application – and has pocketed the accompanying $150,000 fee – under new public input and labor provisions the court adopted in the wake of the Tesla deal. (Other local media have reported on widespread suspicions that "Silicon Silver" is Samsung Semicon­duct­or's proposed massive new chipmaking plant; a county official told us no application has yet been submitted as of Tuesday, Feb. 2.)

This is the second time Travis County has made an exception to the moratorium commissioners placed on such deals – Chapter 28 agreements, in the parlance of state statute – in July 2019, so staff could revise the county's economic incentives policy, last updated in 2014. The first was the deal for Tesla's "Gigafactory," granting the carmaker upwards of $13 million in tax incentives.

At the time, labor organizations were critical of the Tesla negotiations, including Workers Defense Action Fund, which expressed concern about the lack of independent, third-party monitoring or enforcement measures in that deal's safety and wage standards. "The Tesla deal was made public on a Friday night and the vote happened the following Tuesday – that didn't allow for real public input," WDAF Deputy Director of Better Builder and Policy Jessica Wolff told the Chronicle this week.

Unlike the public process used by the city of Austin for its Chapter 380 agreements (also referring to the state tax code), Travis County has only published the main terms of proposed incentive deals before they've arrived before commissioners. Last Decem­ber, Commissioner Brigid Shea proposed that draft Chapter 28 agreements be posted in full on the county's website for five to seven days for public comment, as well as two public hearings. "The need for this amendment," said Shea during a December voting session, "really came out of the whole Tesla negotiations." The county's new engagement policy for Silicon Silver mirrors, in part, the city's Chapter 380 public-input language.

Other measures adopted by commissioners include safety training and standards for construction workers, and local hiring thresholds for both Silicon Silver's construction and future full-time workforce. This includes adherence to the county's Contract Com­pli­ance Program requirement for independent on-site monitoring of working conditions for construction, which was not part of the Tesla deal. The interim county policy would not allow any contractor with wage theft or federal worker safety violations within the past three years to bid on Silicon Silver.

"These provisions are absolutely a step forward in protecting workers from bad actors, but there's still more work to do. Policies and provisions that favor people over profit should be the norm, not the exception," said Wolff. Staff says the county's permanent new Chapter 28 policy should be complete later this summer.