Public input needed on SAWS, CPS

San Antonio is lucky to be one of a few large American cities where electricity and water are provided by publicly owned utilities. We are not at the mercy of private corporations maximizing profit at our expense and changing ownership by hedge fund speculators.

But how different are SAWS and CPS Energy? Each has a board of trustees, with members approved by City Council. Our mayor serves as an ex-officio member of each board. Each must submit customer rate proposals to City Council for approval.

Unfortunately, city oversight is more apparent than real. Both utilities have a long history of functioning as private corporations seeking maximum revenue, service growth and promotion of city business growth, with City Council rubber stamping rate increases, board nominees and wasteful misguided projects like Vista Ridge and Spruce 2. These are both billion-dollar projects that should never have been built, were built over heated public opposition and will become “stranded assets,” costing us all.

Our city government accepts one-third of its budget from utility sources as recompense for its hands-off approach to our “publicly owned” utilities.

In the past, we put the “public” back in our “public utilities.” Public policy direction of our utilities should be set by the City Council; our utilities should act in accord with those policies. Our utilities should not have their own legislative agendas and their own paid lobbyists in Austin. These efforts should be integrated into city efforts.

Major public policy decisions should be initiated and vetted by our city, not the utility. Resource planning by the city of San Antonio, with full public involvement throughout, would have avoided the Vista Ridge and Spruce 2 debacles.

Utility board meetings should follow open government rules, and CPS Citizens Advisory Committee should not function in secret. Board appointments should be done by a public process, with published criteria and questionnaires for selection. Interviews with applicants should be public with the same participation guidelines the city recently adopted for itself. CEO selection for CPS and SAWS should be handled in a similar public process and city manager likewise.

Our CEOs, Paula Gold-Williams of CPS and Robert R. Puente of SAWS, like our city manager, should have public accountability. How, for example, is it possible to have no conflict of interest with Gold-Williams serving as chair of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce?

For the second time in a year, CPS has selected — in secret — a new board member, who will have some token public outreach opportunities, and like City Manager Erik Walsh, go to council for an up or down vote. SAWS board Chairman Berto Guerra is nearing the end of his second four-year term, to which he is legally limited. Nonetheless, there is no action by SAWS to begin replacement proceedings — Guerra having indicated his desire to continue on until Vista Ridge water begins flowing in 2020.

Our democracy is crippled by a good old boy network that holds us in a “growth is good, sprawl is great” model. We need more than diversity of gender and ethnic origin on our boards and council. Diversity of thought would make the CPS Energy and SAWS boards stronger, but this process of self-selecting replacements without public input all but guarantees that won’t happen.

At their first Council A Session, council and Mayor Ron Nirenberg passed a resolution committing us to meet the Paris climate agreement goals. Now, the city has released a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan without any commitment from CPS to end its use of fossil fuels. This plan needs to be backed up with real action. CPS fails to commit, sticking to its false “flexible” stance. I urge voters to judge our council and mayor by their actions to rein in our utilities now.

Terry Burns, M.D., is chair of the Alamo Group, Sierra Club.