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Tom Blauvelt never imagined that he would be discussing the party house at 16601 Jackson Street with state lawmakers. But there he was on an April day in an underground warren of the state Capitol being grilled by legislators from Kingsville, Odessa, and San Antonio over his tiny Central Texas town’s handling of a single lakeside short-term rental. Blauvelt, a sales executive, is the unpaid mayor of the village of Volente, an affluent community of about six hundred on the north shore of Lake Travis, some twenty miles northwest of downtown Austin. In recent years, the town has seen a surge in Airbnbs, many of them operating without the permits that the town requires. But few had rattled the community as much as what Blauvelt calls…

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