Leon County Rewrote Its Abatement Rules. The Job Minimum, the Local Hiring Rule, and the Neighbor Protection Didn't Make It.

On July 27 the Commissioners Court threw out Leon County’s tax abatement rules and adopted new ones.

I read the old and the new side by side. Parts of the rewrite are a genuine improvement, and I’ll get to those. But six things came out of our rules that day:

• The twenty-job minimum
• The requirement that half the new hires live in Leon County
• The step-down schedule that shrank the tax break year by year
• The rule barring projects that create adverse impacts on adjacent properties
• The rule barring projects that pose a hazard to public safety
• The requirement that the project wouldn’t have been built here anyway

Every number an applicant could actually fail is gone.

I’m hosting all of it so it can’t quietly disappear: the previous guidelines, the new 2026 guidelines, and the new application checklist. Read along and check me.

Side by side: the deal terms

The step-down mattered more than it looks. The whole design was that the break shrank as the company got established — a company in year nine of a Step Three abatement was paying 60 percent of its taxes. There’s no schedule to step down from now. The split is whatever gets negotiated, and the guidelines say nothing about what it should be.

Side by side: the things that used to disqualify a project

The previous guidelines listed six objections. The language was mandatory — “The project must not have any of the following objections” — and it sat in the General Criteria every application had to clear before anyone looked at the money.

And one ground appears that wasn’t there before — Section II(I)(4): “any other reason deemed appropriate by the County.”

Three of six, gone. The adjacent-properties objection is the one people have been asking me about. The public safety objection went out the same door, and I haven’t heard anyone mention it yet.

We asked about this in open court

Nobody had to go hunting for this. At the July 13 meeting — the same meeting where the court voted to approve the update contingent on the county attorney’s review — we asked directly whether that objection was being taken out.

We were told nothing was being removed, and that it was still in there.

Here is the exchange:

The guidelines adopted two weeks later, on July 27, do not contain it.

There’s a fair explanation for that, and it deserves to be said. On July 13, the document wasn’t finished. The motion was expressly contingent on the county attorney’s review. When I asked for a copy on the 21st, I was told he was still working on it. The final version wasn’t adopted until the 27th or posted until the 29th. An answer given on the 13th could have been accurate about the draft as it stood that morning, with the language coming out sometime in the two weeks after.

I’ll take the county at its word on that. But that is the problem.

If a document can be voted on before it exists, described in open court one way, and adopted two weeks later in another, then the answers given at that meeting aren’t worth much — not because anyone lied, but because nobody in the room, including the people answering, could see what they were describing. The public was told nothing was being removed. Three of the six objections are gone. In between, there was no version anyone outside the courthouse could check.

That’s not a question about anyone’s character. It’s a question about voting on paperwork that hasn’t been written yet.

What happened to “adverse impacts to adjacent properties”

The words adjacent properties do still appear in the new document. They appear twice, and both times they’ve been demoted.

On page 1, as an eligibility item. The planned improvement:

“must exercise reasonable mitigation efforts to minimize the impacts on adjacent properties and Leon County’s natural resources”

In Section II(H), as factor 18 of 19 that “will be considered”:

“Potential impacts on surround properties and the Applicant’s plans to mitigate”

Set those against what they replaced. The old rule said a project that would create adverse impacts to adjacent properties must not be approved. That’s an outcome. Either the neighbors get hurt or they don’t.

The new rule asks the applicant to make reasonable efforts to minimize impacts, and makes potential impacts one of nineteen things the court will consider. A company can make reasonable efforts, watch those efforts fall short, and still qualify. Trying is the standard now. Not succeeding.

The new guidelines do keep one hard-sounding bar, in the opening paragraph:

“No application submitted under the following schedule which may have substantially adverse effects on natural resources in the County, or on County infrastructure (including roads and bridges), will be approved, unless the applicant can demonstrate just cause for such an exception and/or provide for the satisfactory mitigation of such impacts.”

Look at what that protects: natural resources and county infrastructure. Roads and bridges. It does not mention your house. The old rules gave adjacent private property its own separate objection. The new ones protect the county’s assets and leave your property line to a mitigation-effort standard and a discretionary factor.

And look at the exception clause, which is doing real work: unless the applicant can demonstrate just cause and/or provide for satisfactory mitigation. The old version of that sentence ended at “just cause.” The mitigation escape hatch is new.

Three more requirements that vanished

The old rules opened with a short list every application had to satisfy. Three items on it are simply not in the new document.

“The project would not otherwise be developed.”

This is the but-for test, and it is the entire economic argument for abatements. If a company was going to build here regardless, an abatement doesn’t attract anything — it hands over money that was already coming. The old rules made it a threshold requirement. The new rules don’t ask the question anywhere.

“The project creates permanent full time employment opportunities.”

Now: “The creation of new jobs will also factor into the decision to grant an Abatement.” Will factor into.

“The project has not been started and no construction by the applicant has commenced at the time the application is approved.”

The new guidelines get partway there — Section II(B) limits abatement to value created after the agreement — but the clean requirement that construction not already be underway is gone.

The checklist is real, and it’s good

Along with the guidelines, the court adopted a seven-page application checklist, and it is a serious piece of work. Fourteen sections. Boundary surveys. FEMA floodplain maps. Traffic impact analyses, heavy haul route studies, pavement degradation studies. Total and peak water demand, closed-loop versus evaporative cooling analysis, drought contingency plans. Air emissions inventories. Baseline ambient noise studies, low-frequency noise analysis, transformer noise analysis, generator testing noise analysis. Photometric studies and dark-sky compliance. Endangered species surveys. Decommissioning plans. An MOU with the emergency services districts and the volunteer fire departments.

It also shuts a door I complained about in my post on the Crusoe application, where the answers came back as “as needed,” “approximately,” and “subject to change.” Items “may not be left blank or omitted without explanation,” and anything marked Not Applicable needs a written reason.

Whoever drafted this was tracking the same things a lot of us have been raising in that room for months — the noise, the water, what happens when the thing shuts down.

One more improvement worth naming: the old rules let the court waive its own criteria by simple majority. The new ones take a three-quarters vote to amend. That’s tighter.

And then look at what it actually requires

Every item on it is a study, not a standard.

• “Closed-loop versus evaporative cooling analysis” — not: closed-loop cooling is required
• “Property-line noise modeling” — not: a decibel limit at the property line
• “Photometric study,” “night sky impact analysis” — not: shielded fixtures required
• “Total projected water demand” — not: a cap on it
• “Decommissioning plan” — not: a bond posted to pay for it

I went through all fourteen sections looking for one number an applicant could fail. There isn’t one. The old Step Three said twenty jobs and fifty percent local — thresholds you either hit or you don’t.

So: the county got much better at asking questions and much weaker at requiring answers.

Everything the checklist produces flows into nineteen factors that “will be considered,” and into a denial provision that now ends with “any other reason deemed appropriate.” That’s wide discretion, and discretion isn’t a rule. A bright line binds the court on the days it would rather not be bound. Discretion only protects you when four people decide to use it — and that’s the only kind of protection left in the document.

The timeline

Every item here is a document, and every document is public.

• June 29 — Crusoe’s application asks the county for “a variance to the tiered step down abatement terms to be more aligned with industry standards.”
• July 13 — The Commissioners Court votes to approve updated guidelines, criteria, and checklist. The motion is contingent on the county attorney’s review. The document is not finished. I was in the room.
• July 16 — Jack Winn of Crusoe emails Judge Ryder, all four commissioners, and County Attorney Keith Cook: “Can you please provide us with the updated abatement application guidelines & criteria that were approved on Monday?”
• July 21 — I ask the county for a copy so the public can read it before the hearing. I’m told the county attorney is still working on it and that I’ll get it when it’s complete. I never receive it.
• July 27 — The court holds the public hearing required by Tax Code § 312.002(c-1), then adopts the guidelines. Signed by all five members.
• July 29 — The document goes up online. That’s when the public first got to read it.

Crusoe asked to be relieved of the tiered step-down. Six weeks later, the tiered step-down does not exist.

I am not telling you the rules were written for one applicant. I can’t prove that, and I’m not going to imply it. The ordinary explanation is a fair one: the old guidelines were written for a different era of development, well before anyone was proposing a project on this scale here, and they needed updating. The checklist is real evidence that somebody did serious work.

But the sequence is the sequence, and you’re entitled to see it.

What this means for Crusoe

My earlier post on Crusoe argued the company was asking for more than our own rules allowed — a variance from Step Three. That argument is now out of date, and I’d rather flag it than leave it standing.

That application was rejected. If Crusoe comes back, it comes back under these rules.

There is no Step Three to request a variance from. No twenty-job minimum for forty permanent jobs to clear. No requirement that twenty of those forty go to people who live here. No schedule that steps the abatement down as the campus fills out. Whatever the court negotiates is the deal.

What I’d ask for

I’m not asking anyone to reject anything. I’m asking for the deleted parts to come back. None of them are unreasonable — every one was Leon County’s own rule until July 27.

1. Put a job minimum back in, scaled to the size of the abatement.
2. Put the local hiring percentage back in. “Career opportunities for county residents” should mean something you can count.
3. Put back the adjacent-properties objection — as an outcome, not a mitigation effort.
4. Put back the public safety objection.
5. Put back the but-for test. If the project is coming anyway, we aren’t buying anything.
6. Adopt a step-down schedule, so the break shrinks as the company gets on its feet.

Section VIII lets the court amend these guidelines by a three-quarters vote. Four of five. That’s entirely doable.

Check this yourself

• Previous guidelines and criteria — General Criteria and the six objections on page 2; the three Steps follow
• New 2026 guidelines, signed July 27 — eligibility on page 1, the nineteen factors in Section II(H), denial grounds in Section II(I)
• New 2026 application checklist
• The Crusoe application — the variance request in their own words
• The county also posts these under Local Tax Abatement Information on its website

If I’ve read any of this wrong, I want to know, and I’ll correct it here with the same prominence. Everything is linked above. You don’t have to take my word for a single sentence in this post.

Related: what a tax abatement is, what a reinvestment zone is, and how the 3.5% cap and the no-new-revenue rate actually work.