SECRET CITY/PUB MEETING TO DISCUSS FREEZE UTILITY COSTS; THEY KEPT US IN THE DARK ONCE AND ARE DOING IT AGAIN

2) Executive Session for report, discussion, and possible action on impact of Winter Storm URI on Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) participants, including the Brownsville Public Utilities Board, impact of costs, payment options, remedial options for recovery of any losses including legal, regulatory, and legislative actions, possible Brownsville Public Utilities Board plan of action, and Board action thereon. (Sections 551.071 and 551.086). (City Manager's Office)

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Well, they're at it again. 

Today the Brownsville Public Utilities Board and the City of Brownsville Commission are holding a joint meeting at 5:30 p.m. to discuss the impact of Winter Storm URI on the city's utilities and local residents.

However, the PUB attorneys and City Manager Noel Bernal have decided that you should not hear how the PUB performed (or didn't) during that emergency. 

Will you have to pay exorbitant bills as a result of PUB's inadequate response to the polar front that left residents here without heat or light?

Did PUB make money selling its "surplus" power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas while children and the elderly suffered through the cold in some cases for three or four days?

Are PUB ratepayers on the hook to ERCOT for millions after having delivered 80 percent of its electric production to the ERCOT grid?

The fact that Bernal and the PUB have decided to keep things hush hush so no one will know what really happened by discussing the item in executive session speaks volumes. We looked under the Texas Open Meetings Act and could find no exemptions to holding an open meeting. 

The legal aspects are protected, but that could have been a separate issue without preventing the people from being informed in open meeting of all the other issues that impacted them directly during the freeze and will continue to impact them economically in the future.

Nowhere in the chapter does it say that the city commission or PUB can close a meeting to

(a) hide their poor performance during the emergency

(b) plan to gouge PUB ratepayers for their mistakes

(c) want to keep ratepayers in the dark, again

Some of those exemptions are :

A governmental body may not conduct a private consultation with its attorney except:
(1) when the governmental body seeks the advice of its attorney about:
(A) pending or contemplated litigation; or 
(B) a settlement offer; or
(2) on a matter in which the duty of the attorney to the governmental body under the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct of the State Bar of Texas clearly conflicts with this chapter.

A governmental body may conduct a closed meeting to deliberate the purchase, exchange, lease, or value of real property if deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the governmental body in negotiations with a third person.


(1) the commission votes unanimously that deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the state in negotiations with a third person; and
(2) the attorney advising the commission issues a written determination finding that deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the state in negotiations with a third person and setting forth that finding therein.

A governmental body may conduct a closed meeting to deliberate a negotiated contract for a prospective gift or donation to the state or the governmental body if deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the governmental body in negotiations with a third person.

This chapter does not require a governmental body to conduct an open meeting:
(1) to deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee; or
(2) to hear a complaint or charge against an officer or employee.
(b) Subsection (a) does not apply if the officer or employee who is the subject of the deliberation or hearing requests a public hearing.

This chapter does not require a governmental body to conduct an open meeting to deliberate:
(1) the deployment, or specific occasions for implementation, of security personnel or devices; or
(2) a security audit.

Or if the notice of the subject matter of an item that may be considered as a competitive matter under this section is required to contain no more than a general representation of the subject matter to be considered, such that the competitive activity of the public power utility with respect to the issue in question is not compromised or disclosed

This chapter does not require a governmental body to conduct an open meeting:
(1) to discuss or deliberate regarding commercial or financial information that the governmental body has received from a business prospect that the governmental body seeks to have locate, stay, or expand in or near the territory of the governmental body and with which the governmental body is conducting economic development negotiations; or

(2) to deliberate the offer of a financial or other incentive to a business prospect

Section 551.001 of the Texas Government Code (the companion to the Open Meetings Act): “Under the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government that adheres to the principle that government is the servant and not the master of the people, it is the policy of this state that each person is entitled, unless otherwise expressly provided by law, at all times to complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees.”