Update: Shortly after this column posted Thursday afternoon, Gov. Greg Abbott's office set up a meeting Tuesday with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, according to Rawlings' office.

The governor of Texas has a message for Dallas residents: You don't matter. Oh, and you, too, good people of Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Take a flying leap.

At the moment, at least, it would appear Greg Abbott doesn't have any interest in meeting with the mayors of Texas' five biggest cities, who last week signed a missive asking him for a sit-down to discuss his ever-escalating war on city halls. Mayor Mike Rawlings had yet to receive a response from Austin Thursday. Neither has Austin Mayor Steve Adler, his office confirmed.

Said Rawlings, "I am disappointed." A little ticked, too, or maybe I misunderstood the tone of his voice when he said Abbott's trying to "castrate the abilities of cities to react to their citizens." Maybe Rawlings was grinning. So hard to tell over the phone.

Houston and San Antonio also can't seem to get a meeting, according to their mayors' offices. "And I don't understand why not," said Bruce Davidson, spokesman for San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

Even Fort Worth's Betsy Price, a Republican, has so far been forced to gnaw on the static coming from the office of the governor who just endorsed Kid Rock for U.S. Senate. Price's spokeswoman, Cheraya Peña, said via email Wednesday night that "Mayor Price has always had a good working relationship with Governor Abbott and is optimistic about meeting with him soon."

Well, at least Abbott's malice toward big cities is bipartisan.

Now, he isn't ignoring all the mayors who signed the missive, which asked the governor to reconsider "harmful proposals" aimed at, among other things, capping property tax increases and cities' abilities to set budgets, vanishing their annexation authority and repealing locally approved ordinances that protect everything from transgender Texans to trees on private property. Mayors from Amarillo, El Paso, Irving, McKinney, Frisco and Lubbock, for instance, got on his to-do list.

But Texas' biggest cities — the ones to which people are moving, the ones collecting the most sales tax revenue, the ones driving the state and nation's economy, the ones with most of the state's population, the ones in which many big businesses planted their headquarters before Abbott took a switchblade to the Texas Miracle — are getting ignored. And as a result, said Adler spokesman Jason Stanford, "The governor is cutting off his nose to spite his state."

"Look, I am very concerned," Rawlings said about this game of chicken the governor's playing with big cities. "Economic growth is a very delicate matter, and we could do the wrong things at the state level. We could set the state back, the cities back, markedly. And then we blow up the momentum of the economy that is really hot right now. As I told Sen. [Don] Huffines and others, why are we screwing with this? It's working."

Wednesday morning, I called and emailed Abbott's office to find out why he's refusing to take a meeting at the mansion, or if the invite was just lost in the mail. A day later, still no response.

This should surprise no one: Abbott, the man who wants the feds to beat it yet thinks the state knows best when he's decrying the "United States of Municipalities," never heard a more prudent voice he wasn't willing to ignore. Among them are the more than 1,300 major Texas employers who've spent the week in Austin begging lawmakers to kill the bathroom bill, lest they chase away billions of dollars in the name of solving a problem that does not exist.

"People are not wanting to listen to the job creators in this state anymore," Rawlings said. "The whole bathroom bill is example No. 1. They know this is going to be bad, and when people argue it's not going to be bad for business, it's obvious they're not in touch with reality. They're in touch with the voters who elected them. And more power to them for that. But they don't understand customers."

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price are among those who have asked to meet with Gov. Greg Abbott. (File Photo/Staff)

Abbott also seems to know more than the cops who showed up Tuesday to protest the bathroom bill, among them Dallas police Maj. Reuben Ramirez. Standing behind a podium on the Capitol steps, Ramirez said that in the last three years, no one in Dallas has ever — ever — complained about the very thing Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick insist will happen if transgender Texans use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

Said Ramirez: "Look at the research. Look at the statistics. If you support your police, then listen to your police. There's no need for this legislation."

A few hours later, the Senate passed the bathroom bill. So much for backing the blue.

The governor's not going to listen to a bunch of cops. Why did anyone think he was gonna care what some mayors have to say?