DESPITE GALONSKY'S BACKBITING, TENASKA PUB/AUDIT IS ON

1) Consideration and ACTION, to assign the City Auditor to conduct an audit of the Brownsville Public Utilities Board (BPUB) pursuant to City Charter Articles I, II, V and VI, as previously authorized by this Commission on May 5, 2020, and to authorize the City Manager to commit sufficient resources to assist in the audit. (City Attorney)

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

It's only fitting that it would have to be the year 2020 when the City of Brownsville Commission passed an agenda item above by a 7-0 vote to get to the bottom of the Teanska-PUB-COB electric generating plant debacle.

The Memorandum Of Understanding was approved by the city commission during the December 2012 and an ordinance approving rate hikes in utilities to pay for the $325 million bonds to purchase rights-of-way and build the plant were funded by a steep hike in the utility rates starting in 2013.

Since then, the city commission has learned that Tenaska had given up on building the plant in 2015 and that the PUB had shut down the deal by 2017. However, the rates remain artificially high to this day and now PUB administrators say that lowering the rates to pre-Tenaska rates will hurt the annual transfers to the city that makes up about $14 million of the city budget. 

Yet, no one told the city commission that plant project had been abandoned until commissioner Ben Neece forced a joint COB-PUB meeting where PUB's top 3 administrators admitted the construction of the $550 million plant had been unsuccessful. They blamed lower oil prices forced by OPEC flooding the oil market for their failure.

(Neece has been the lone voice in the Tenaska wilderness until recently joined by Tetreau. We searched out files and found this photo of him protesting the Tenaska deal taken before he was elected to the city commission.)

 Whenever anyone asked for an accounting of the funds that resulted from the hike in utilities (more than 36 percent for electricity alone) paid by PUB ratepayers, both PUB and Tenaska hid behind the excuse of "proprietary rights" and said that disclosing the contents of the MOU would give their competitors in the utility market an unfair advantage.

They were successful in their arguments to keep the public in the dark by appealing the release of the information by asking for Texas Attorney General opinions on the matter. They were never asked to produce any document or accounting to the city.  

For years, citizens' requests to examine the MOU to determine the obligations and the fine print had been kept hidden from the commission. One, commissioner Nurith Galonsky, who was the only commissioner who voiced objections to the city auditor performing the audit, served as the chair on the PUB during some of those years. She said she objected to the "meddling" on the subject by "some members of the commission," referring to Neece and commissioner Jessica Tetreau.

Tetreau, Galonsky said pointedly, had voted for Tenaska with the Tony Martinez administration in 2012.

In the discussion that followed the reading of the item, city commission, Galonsky said she wanted to know whether any new staff would be hired by the auditor's office and commissioner Rose Gowen questioned whether the auditor had the expertise to audit the utility's finances vis-a-vis the private energy company.

City manager Noel Bernal said that no new personnel would be hired and that it could be done internally with the staff already on board so that there would be no new hiring needed. Commissioner John Cowen told the commission that city auditor, Patrick J. Zacchini, a CPA, had worked as an auditor for a utility company before coming to the city. 

City attorney Rene de Coss said that Zacchini had found a city staffer also well versed on the subject and would just move him over to their office for the duration of the audit.

Bernal also said that the initial demand for detailed information on how the PUB and Tenaska had spent the money paid by ratepayers (estimated at some $120 to $150 million) had been authored by Neece and Tetreau but that since the project had been abandoned, there was no reason why the information sought could not be released and that PUB provided much of the documentation in their request.

After a meandering discussion addressing Galonsky's objections, Neece called the question and prompted the vote, this time with Galonsky joining the majority.

But there are now rumors that the audit may be done without the help of the PUB Finance Director, Leandro Garcia who is said to have flown the coop and left the utility. Numerous attempts to confirm Garcia's leaving were met with recordings of the PUB answering system and got nowhere.