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AUSTIN — Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock said Monday state sales tax revenue totaled $4.5 billion in May, 6.6 percent more than in May 2025. The majority of May sales tax revenue is based on sales made in April and remitted to the agency in May.

“State sales tax collections showed solid growth well above the rate of general price inflation last month, driven in large part by strong increases in certain sectors influenced by business spending,” Hancock said. “Results from nearly all major economic sectors were positive.”

Receipts from the sectors mainly affected by business spending were overall very robust compared with a year ago, with the manufacturing and construction sectors both exhibiting growth of more than 15 percent. Remittances from the wholesale trade sector came in nearly 6 percent more than their May 2025 total. Collections from the mining sector were down slightly.

Among the large sectors driven primarily by consumer spending, remittances from the largest sector, retail trade, were up more than 3 percent compared with last May, and remittances from the services sector increased by more than 8 percent. Within the retail trade sector, collections from electronic shopping outlets were up more than 13 percent and general merchandise stores remitted nearly 2 percent more than in May 2025.

Receipts from restaurants were up 4.3 percent from a year ago, above the rate of inflation for food away from home.

Total sales tax revenue for the three months ending in May 2026 was up 8.7 percent compared with the same period a year ago. Sales tax is the largest source of state funding for the state budget, accounting for 58 percent of all tax collections.

Texas collected the following revenue from other major taxes:

• motor vehicle sales and rental taxes — $599 million, down 13 percent from May 2025;
• motor fuel taxes — $333 million, down 2 percent from May 2025;
• oil production tax — $677 million, up 64 percent from May 2025;
• natural gas production tax – $217 million, down 4 percent from May 2025;
• hotel occupancy tax — $74 million, up 6 percent from May 2025; and
• alcoholic beverage taxes — $156 million, up less than 1 percent from May 2025.

Fiscal 2026 franchise tax collections totaled $6.5 billion year-to-date through May.

Compared with collections through May 2025, year-to-date franchise tax collections were down 0.5 percent, lower than was projected in the Comptroller’s 2026-27 Certification Revenue Estimate. Franchise tax entities may request an extension until November 15. Accordingly, franchise tax revenue from the most recent report year will continue to be received through November 2026.

For details on all monthly collections, visit the Comptroller’s Monthly State Revenue Watch.

POLK COUNTY (KETK) — After receiving multiple allegations of ongoing sexual abuse, Polk County officials have arrested a volunteer of several local churches last week. According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, they received reports on May 27 from adults and minors that 40-year-old Doyle Hodge II was sexually abusing them. After opening an investigation, deputies identified five possible victims, with additional individuals continuing to come forward.

Detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Hodge to ensure the safety and well-being of the children involved. On Friday, he was taken into the Polk County Jail for sexual assault of a child and is being held on a $100,000 bond.

The investigation remains active, and additional charges are expected to be filed.

According to the sheriff’s office, Hodge was a volunteer at several of the local churches. Anyone with any additional information regarding the case or who believes they may be a victim is encouraged to contact investigator Kayla Hemperly at 936-327-6810.

WISE COUNTY – On Monday, June 1, at 7:00 a.m., Texas Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol Troopers responded to a single-vehicle motorcycle crash in rural Wise County.

A preliminary investigation indicated that the rider of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle was traveling south on FM 920 at an unsafe speed and failed to negotiate a curve. The rider went off the road and laid the motorcycle over. The rider was not wearing a helmet.

The rider, Shaun Allan Waits, a 56-year-old male of Weatherford, Texas, was pronounced dead on the scene.

This investigation is ongoing, and no additional information is available at this time.

CORPUS CHRISTI (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – Corpus Christi City Council is set to discuss Tuesday whether to revive a controversial and ambitious endeavor to build a desalination plant to convert seawater into drinkable water — a project the council rejected nine months ago over high costs and environmental concerns.

A stubborn drought and rising demand has left the city strapped for water, but the coastal community is still divided on whether an expensive plant is worth the cost to taxpayers and the local ecosystem.

Desalination removes salt and other minerals from seawater or salty groundwater, but plants are expensive to build and require lots of energy to run.

The city’s water department, the mayor and some City Council members view the proposed plant, the Inner Harbor Desalination Project, as the key to a long-term, steady water supply. City Manager Peter Zanoni often calls it a “drought-proof” solution capable of producing up to 30 million gallons of drinking water a day.

If approved Tuesday, the earliest the facility would deliver water is late 2029, too far away to help the city dodge its immediate emergency needs. According to projections, the city is expecting to impose emergency water restrictions in December, when demand is expected to exceed supplies in six months, though recent rain may push restrictions back into early 2027.

Mayor Paulette Guajardo, a strong supporter of the project, said the city needs to think long-term. “At the blink of an eye, three years will be here,” she said.

The facility is estimated to cost $978.8 million, which the water department said is a “guaranteed maximum price.” That’s about 25% cheaper than previous cost estimates.

The water department has already corralled a number of contractors to jump on the plant, which would be built along the bay in Hillcrest, a historically Black neighborhood. It’s fully permitted and about 60% designed. The soonest it would deliver water, if approved Tuesday, would be late 2029.

Climbing costs played a big role in the City Council’s September decision to abandon the original plan, but critics are also concerned about where the plant’s salty leftovers would be released. Under the proposal under consideration Tuesday, millions of gallons of the brine byproduct — which can be twice as salty as seawater — would be discharged into Corpus Christi Bay, home to a variety of fish, crabs and seagrass.

The city hired a consultant, Spheros Environmental Group, to review the Inner Harbor project’s ecological impact on the bay. The report, finalized last week, concluded that the plant would not disrupt the bay’s ecosystem, Zanoni said.

That report follows a 2020 study evaluating the city’s original desalination project by Freese and Nichols, an engineering consulting firm based in Houston, which found that sea creatures living in the bay can tolerate high salt conditions, and that the proposed plant’s discharge would not surpass that threshold.

But Isabel Araiza, co-founder of the citizens group For the Greater Good, is not convinced.

“It just makes sense in a practically closed-based system, you don’t dump 54 million gallons of brine and sludge into the bay every single day and not expect that to destroy the bay,” Araiza said.

She’s asking city leaders to instead focus on forcing the region’s largest water users — oil refineries and petrochemical plants — to conserve water. Over the past decade, Corpus Christi aggressively courted large industrial facilities that require large amounts of water, promising a sufficient supply.

Now, the city’s main reservoirs have shriveled up, threatening 25% water cuts for all city customers that could begin in December or early 2027. City leaders on Tuesday also will discuss how those restrictions would be implemented, and how high surcharge rates would be, if a Level 1 emergency is triggered — the point when the city is six months away from supply falling short of demand.

Araiza said the proposed desalination plant is “not a sustainable solution economically or environmentally, it’s an industrial want,” and that “the right moral and ethical choice” is to reject it again.

But some community members view the desalination plant as the city’s last lifeline.

Nelda Martinez, who lives along the bay, pleaded with City Council members to move forward with the Inner Harbor project.

“People that you serve are worried if they’re going to have their job tomorrow,” she said during a March meeting. “There have been businesses that have shut down. There have been businesses that now are planning their exit plans. There are people and entities that have decided that they’re not going to move here.”

Ginny Cross, vice president of advocacy for United Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, said she hopes city leaders move forward with a desalination plant because an evergreen water source could save businesses from threats of future surcharges. Mandatory restrictions would be especially hard on car washes and landscaping companies, she said.

“We obviously want our public officials to be good stewards of our tax dollars, but I fear that the days of plentiful, inexpensive water are gone,” Cross said. “I hate that reality for everybody, but I think we’re either going to have expensive plentiful water, or expensive scarce water. I think if we’re going to pay for it, we’d rather have lots of it.”

The city is also considering two desalination plant proposals from private companies. In March, the City Council agreed to hear a plan from Aquatech, a desalination company offering to finish building a water plant for plastics manufacturer Corpus Christi Polymers if the city agrees to purchase water from it.

City representatives also are in talks with AXE H2O, a 2-month-old Houston company that is offering to fully fund and build a desalination facility in the Coastal Bend area. Before work could begin, the city would have to commit to buying at least 50 million gallons a day for at least 30 years.

Kenneth Dees, a water resources engineer based in Fort Worth, said Corpus Christi and the rest of the state should start preparing to shell out more for water, including desalination plants, as the drought deepens and infrastructure ages.

“We’re not running out of water, we’re running out of cheap water,” Dees said.

The original article for this story appears here.