Mayor shies from morals of Chick-fil-A vote

Agree with him or not, you can’t deny that Councilman Roberto Treviño had a moral imperative last week for his push to get Chick-fil-A dropped from an airport concessions contract.

In offering an amendment to the city’s seven-year deal with Paradies Lagardere, the District 1 councilman said he couldn’t support Chick-fil-A occupying the 658-square-foot space in the Terminal A because he objected to the fast-food company’s history of donating to organizations that oppose LGBTQ rights.

“The work our city has done to become a champion of equality and inclusion should not be undone so easily,” Treviño said.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg sided with Treviño. But Nirenberg didn’t frame the issue in moral terms.

He dispassionately defended the council’s action as a sound business move. Because Chickfil-A closes (for religious reasons ) every Sunday, Nirenberg argued the city would lose 15 percent of its revenue from that location. Besides, the company isn’t local.

When asked by WOAI-TV whether the controversial Chickfil-A vote wasn’t, in fact, about LGBTQ rights, Nirenberg showed obvious discomfort.

“No, the issue is making sure we have a restaurant that’s going to serve seven days a week,” Nirenberg said. “Because travelers come in every day of the week and we know that 15 percent of volume in the airport happens on a Sunday.”

That answer marked the continuation of a curious Nirenberg pattern.

In addressing hot-button issues with social-justice or civil-rights implications, Nirenberg generally leans to the left, but he explains his positions by backing away from the moral core of those issues.

He is the reluctant progressive. The lukewarm liberal. The tolerant technocrat.

When Nirenberg declined to support a San Antonio bid for the 2020 Republican National Convention, County Commissioner Tommy Calvert was among the local politicos who agreed with him.

Calvert cited President Donald Trump’s “disrespectful rhetoric” about undocumented Mexican immigrants as his reason for wanting to keep the RNC out of San Antonio.

Nirenberg, however, insisted that his opposition had nothing to do with Trump.

In a letter to the North San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, Nirenberg wrote, “My concerns about San Antonio hosting the convention were rooted in fiscal discipline.”

Nirenberg said the convention would have put local taxpayers “on the hook” for the estimated $70 million convention bid. In fact, the convention host committee, not the city of San Antonio, would have been responsible for generating the funds, and most of that money would have come from private donations.

Nirenberg’s tendency to fall back on dry, fiscal rationales also came through during the 2017 mayoral race.

During one debate, the candidates were asked about Senate Bill 6, aka “the bathroom bill,” a proposal requiring transgender individuals to use restrooms in public schools and government buildings that matched their biological sex, rather than their gender identity.

It was a cruel ploy to demean and humiliate a perpetually marginalized group of people. To make matters worse, the bill was cynically hyped as a way to protect children from predators.

Nirenberg said: “The last thing San Antonio needs is another unenforceable, unfunded dictate coming down from Austin, or from D.C., for that matter.”

He was right. But that answer barely hinted at the moral gravity of the issue.

The big problem with SB6 wasn’t that it would create bureaucratic headaches for Texas cities; it was that the bill represented a fear-mongering exercise in bigotry.

In 2016, only two council members voted against a mediated collective-bargaining agreement with the San Antonio Police Officers Association: Nirenberg and Rey Saldaña.

Saldaña opposed a clause that limited the ability of police officials and arbitrators to consider the full disciplinary history of an officer accused of misconduct. For Saldaña, the cause was about reforming the way SAPD handles abuse-of-power incidents.

Nirenberg also voted against the deal. His stated reason: It was “not fiscally responsible.”

Nirenberg’s determination to distance himself from the deeper implications of controversial votes can take some tortured turns.

During a KTSA radio debate last Friday with challenger Greg Brockhouse, Nirenberg unwittingly seemed to suggest that city staff had played a role in removing Chick-fil-A from the airport contract. In fact, the staff had substituted Chick-fil-A for Panda Express, because staffers thought Chick-fil-A would be more successful in that spot.

“Chick-fil-A wasn’t even part of the original proposal,” Nirenberg said. “The staff has the discretion in the negotiation phase of the contract to switch out portions of categories, which is exactly what they did and which the City Council authorized them to do, signing up for this RFP (request for proposal) in the first place.”

If that answer didn’t thoroughly confuse you, it surely left you dissatisfied. And that’s the problem with triangulating issues, rather than owning them. ggarcia@express-news.net @gilgamesh470