THE MARTINEZ-SOSSI SCHOOL OF DECEPTION: NOW YOU SEE IT...

By Juan Montoya
The agenda items first posted by the City of Brownsville secretary on Dec. 7, 2012 for the city commission meeting to be held Dec. 11 seemed innocuous enough. Only one item was set for an executive session and that was :
A) Discussion pursuant to Section 551.086, of the Texas Government Code, regarding a proposal for
power from a specific generation project, including costs, pricing information, and evaluation
assistance connected therewith.
The meeting was a joint meeting of the city commission and the Brownsville Public Utilities Board. Only a smattering of PUB and city employees and all the city commission except for commissioner Melissa Zamora, who was noted absent. The meeting was scheduled for 4 p.m. on a Tuesday.
After the commissioners emerged from the executive session at about 4:30, they proceeded to consider the items in open session.
In short order, they open and closed two public hearings within a few minutes and voted to pass them unanimously before the sparse attendance.
What the taxpayers didn't know (and the mayor or commissioners didn't tell them) was that within less than half an hour, they had been obligated to fund a $325 million gas-fired electric plant that they would pay with huge electric and wastewater rate increases that will continue rising into 2016.
That was included in the (also innocuously worded) ordinance allowing the PUB to "provide for upwards adjustments of electrical, water and wastewater service rates fees and charges.
And so, in none fell swoop, the residents of the city were saddled with a huge financial burden which they will pay through utility rate increases.
The first inkling that the residents got about this was the January 11 article in the local newspaper announcing the deal between Tenaska and the city for a $500 million, 800 electric Megawatt generating facility to be built north of the city and financed by PUB for $325 million in debt to be paid by the higher utility rates.
Of those 800 MWs, the city was entitled to 200 MWs and Tenaska would look for customers for the other 600 MW.
 How the ratepayers of PUB were to be indebted for more than half the cost of the plant and receive one-quarter of the power was never addressed. What did emerge later was that the Fitch Rating downgrade of PUB bonds citing ratepayer "fatigue."
PUB ratepayers are now paying for the plant through "small" increases, never reported by the Brownsville Herald until recently. The commissioners adopted rate hikes that will see city residents pay a 36% increase in electric rates over three years, a 20% increase in water rates over the same period, and a 6% hike in waste water costs over two years. Under the plan approved by both bodies, electric rates went up by 14% by October 2013 and will go up another 22% by October 2016.Efforts to find out the details of the city's and Tenaska's obligations to each other has been kept secret because both the PUB and the private utility claimed to the Texas Attorney General's Office that divulging more information would damage their "competitiveness" and "confidentiality." As a result, no one (except for PUB, the city commissioners and Tenaska) really knows what we're in the hook for.
The same thing happened with the proposed sale of prime city real estate that included Lincoln Park to the University of Texas System. The item at the February 25, 2013 meeting read (innocuously enough): D) ACTION on Resolution Number 2013-015, authorizing the donation of a 55.43-acre tract of land to the University of Texas System, designating signatories, and dealing with related matters. (Mayor A. Martinez and Commissioner R. Gowen).
That passed with only commissioner Zamora voting against. Commissioner Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa was absent.
There was no mention that the city was offering to "donate" the 48-acre plot of land upon which Lincoln Park stands and that all they were asking was for the cost of removing the amenities which were put there at a cost to the taxpayers of the city. The item (nor the discussion according to the minutes) never mentioned that the site the mayor and commissioner Rose Gowen wanted to place the new park was directly across from a sewage plant.
By the time alarmed citizens took notice and a lawsuit was filed in court, the deal had been done and it was too late. Yet, city contract attorney Mark Sossi had the gall to tell the court that it was just an item to authorize the city to "negotiate" with the UT System. He failed to mention that the day before the commission meeting, the UT regents had accepted the city's offer to give the park for a fraction of the estimated fair-market value of the land.
This lack of transparency has been the hallmark of the Martinez administration and the majority of the commission. Apparently, what they don't know won't hurt them, they feel.
We are still waiting for the code of ethics ordinance the mayor promised on his first day on the job. Given the track record at ramming his agenda through the city commission and saddling the city residents with the costs of his grandiose projects., it's doubtful we ever will.
After all, remember who he put in charge of drafting that code of ethics? Would you believe ethics-challenged Sossi?