Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation Act (JETI)

JETI — Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation Act

Funds Texas school-district projects improving energy, technology, and innovation outcomes through capital investment.

The Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) Act, administered by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, provides a 10-year school-district maintenance-and-operations (M&O) property-tax value limitation for qualifying businesses making large capital investments in Texas. The standard limitation reduces the taxable property value to 50% of market value; businesses investing within a Qualified Opportunity Zone receive a 75% reduction. Eligible industries include manufacturing, research and development facilities, clean energy infrastructure, semiconductors, hydrogen production, advanced computing, and dispatchable electric generation. Minimum capital investment thresholds scale by county population: $20 million in counties under 100,000 residents, $50 million in counties of 100,000–249,999, $100 million in counties of 250,000–749,999, and $200 million in counties of 750,000 or more.

Job-creation minimums also scale by county population at 10, 35, 50, or 75 new full-time positions respectively; electric generation facilities are entirely exempt from the job requirement. All positions must meet county-average-wage standards. Before filing, the applicant must demonstrate that a credible alternative site outside Texas was genuinely evaluated — the competitive-location justification requirement is a substantive eligibility gate. Applications are submitted through the Texas Comptroller's eSystems portal on a rolling basis with no fixed annual deadline.

The application process requires the applicant to pay a $30,000 fee to the affected school district at the time of filing, and to post a performance bond before the value-limitation agreement is executed. The resulting agreement term is 10 years. JETI replaced the prior Texas Economic Development Act (Chapter 313) when that program expired; it is designed to attract large-scale capital-intensive projects to Texas by reducing long-horizon property-tax exposure for qualifying investments.