⭐ Morning Briefing — September 16, 2026

(Latest updates through September 16, 2026)

Top Story: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick forced ERCOT's board to scrap a contract extension worth up to $6.4 million for CEO Pablo Vegas hours after it was approved, publicly citing "increasing utility costs" — a pay fight that landed the same week new reporting showed Texas still can't say how many real jobs its data centers actually create.

📰 Today's News

1. ⚡ Lt. Gov. Forces ERCOT to Scrap CEO Pablo Vegas's Pay Contract Hours After the Board Approved It

Both ERCOT's board and the Public Utility Commission advanced a six-year contract extension for CEO Pablo Vegas on Tuesday, Sept. 15, with board materials showing up to $6.4 million in "potential earned compensation" for 2027. After The Texas Tribune published a story on the approval, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick posted that he'd told both boards' chairs to "immediately reverse their action" — and said they complied.
"During a time of increasing utility costs, this is not the time to give the CEO of ERCOT a multi-million-dollar pay raise on the backs of ratepayers," Patrick said. Vegas told the Tribune the boards didn't formally rescind their vote but decided not to execute the contract; he called the board's public presentation of the pay figures "confusing to anyone who looked at it" and said the $6.4 million figure mixed money "earned" over years with money actually "paid" in 2027, which he put closer to $4.1 million maximum.
The dispute lands against a backdrop the Tribune laid out in dollars: statewide residential electric rates are up roughly 40% since 2020 (11.50¢ to 16.11¢ per kWh), and the proposed contract came, in the Tribune's words, as "ERCOT grapples with challenges surrounding the influx of data centers connecting to the state grid and accompanying political backlash."
Vegas remains under his current contract through 2027 and says he still expects an extension to eventually be finalized.

Today's Signal: This is the first time the political cost of the state's data-center-driven grid strain has landed personally on the person running the grid — Patrick's objection was framed entirely around ratepayer bills, the same bills every audit and interconnection fight this briefing has tracked is ultimately about.

2. 💼 Texas Can't Say How Many Jobs Its Data Centers Actually Create

A Dallas Morning News investigation found that Texas keeps no separate, public count of data-center jobs, pay, or workers — the Texas Workforce Commission only tracks a broader category covering computing infrastructure, data processing, and web hosting generally. In Ellis County, that category held 10 businesses and 218 jobs in the first quarter of 2026, up from 4 businesses and 22 jobs in the first quarter of 2019 — growth that can't be broken out into permanent versus construction jobs, or verified as data-center-specific.
ERCOT itself confirmed to the paper that it does not collect project-level jobs data for large-load projects and that Gov. Abbott's August audit directive didn't require it to start; the agency plans to publish only aggregate figures, with individual developer data kept confidential.
One of the few public windows into real numbers: a 2019 Dallas County tax abatement for an Equinix data center required at least 25 full-time jobs; a January 2025 certification reported 52 employees as of the end of 2024, at an average full-time wage of $91,220. The abatement expired in 2025, and Dallas County hasn't granted another data-center incentive since. County Judge Clay Jenkins said abatement agreements should require ongoing public reporting on jobs and wages: "The reason you want that reporting requirement is when the story is something that maybe is not so great to tell, and the public needs to know."
A companion Dallas Morning News story offered one concrete counterpoint: Texas State Technical College's Mechanical Electrical and Information Technology (MEI) program in Red Oak — built with Compass Datacenters, which donated a $12.6 million training facility — placed 21 of its first 22 graduates in jobs starting at $22 to $40 an hour, at employers including Siemens, CBRE, and Schneider Electric. A third 12-student cohort began this month.

Today's Signal: The gap between what's verifiable (TSTC's 21-of-22 placement rate) and what isn't (any independent count of how many total jobs the industry has actually created statewide) is exactly the kind of information gap Judge Jenkins is describing — and it's the same transparency problem this week's water-reporting crackdown was aimed at on a different front.

3. 🔇 Collin County Moves Toward Its Own Noise Rules for Data Centers

Collin County commissioners are moving forward with a plan to regulate noise from data centers in the county's unincorporated areas, WFAA reported Sept. 15 — an area where, unlike cities such as McKinney and Plano that already have their own noise ordinances, the county has had no equivalent authority.
The push traces to a resolution a county commissioner said in late August they had filed to give Commissioners Court the ability to manage sound in unincorporated Collin County.

Today's Signal: Noise is one of the few levers a Texas county can actually pull on data centers given the zoning-power gap this briefing covered yesterday — worth watching whether Collin turns this into the state's first county-level noise rule specifically written with data centers in mind.

Quiet today on data-center-specific developments in Johnson, Denton, Wise, Parker, Tarrant, and Hood counties beyond what's already on the record.

📍 Today's Watch List

Actionable Signals for Wednesday, September 16

Whether ERCOT and Pablo Vegas land on a revised, more transparent contract, and what figure it actually settles at.
Whether TWDB's Oct. 14 water-compliance update to the governor's office names any specific noncompliant data centers.
Whether Collin County's noise resolution advances from discussion to an actual vote.
Whether ERCOT's promised aggregate jobs filing, tied to the data-center audit, provides any real texture beyond confidential individual figures.
Whether TSTC and Compass's third MEI cohort, which started this month, reports placement and wage outcomes similar to the first two.
ERCOT's December 10 audit-completion deadline and the roughly 250-300 projects (~200 GW) in the first review batch — no material movement expected before the December PUC meeting, so this stays at the bottom of the list until that date approaches.