If they didn't want to be subject to Austin city regulations they could have not built in Austin city limits
It makes sense that the land owners can choose to be de-annexed if they want.
I can't really blame a for-profit corporation for using the laws as they are written. I blame Texas for having the loophole.
It's funny how whenever a corporation behaves hostilely toward its community, or its customers, or its competitors the rallying cry is "Well it's for profit, they might as well do whatever is mathematically correct", but whenever people turn around and try to make the behavior mathematically incorrect by, say, regulating the corporation or refusing to do business with them or protesting and blocking the factory site they're all of a sudden being unfair and disrupting legitimate business operations.
I'm just saying that a corporation is sort of like the frog/scorpion story; it's their nature to maximize profit in any way they can, and at some point you can't even really blame them. It's up to governments and customers to make bad practices illegal or impractical.
I think we give way too much of a free pass to the actual people making the actual decisions to fuck people over. I think if we started yelling at them and ostracizing them more instead of just shrugging and saying it's the nature of the game, there'd be a lot less misbehavior going around.
I'm just saying that we kind of have to expect this stuff. If there is a loophole, I think we have to assume that someone eventually finding it and exploit it. I'm not saying that every corporation is always going to do it, just that some definitely will. It's up to lawmakers and voters to ensure that the loopholes are closed.