PUB CHAIR, BOARD, RIFE WITH CONFLICT OF INTEREST

(PUB chair Sandra Saenz and her husband Ronnie – now a candidate for Cameron County Sheriff – were ardent Tony Martinez supporters and she, his personal legal secretary, was appointed to the utility's board.)

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Sandra Saenz, the chair of the board of the Brownsville Public Utility Board – and former Brownsville mayor Tony Martinez's personal secretary at the city and his law firm – issued a convoluted statement in the wake of the forensic audit performed for the City of Brownsville commission showing PUB's CEO and 
General Manager John Bruziak and her longtime boss lied to them and to the public about the need for a $500 gas-fired plant that would produce 800 MWs of electricity. 

That deliberate deception involving the need for construction of the plant by the Omaha-based Tenaska energy company led the city commission to approve utility rate hikes of more than 40 percent since 2013. The city, which paid for three-quarters of the money needed to build the plant, would get one-quarter of the electricity produced, 200 MWs, and Tenaska would sell the remaining 600 MWs to subscribers before construction could begin. It never did. 

Today, with only $29 million left of the approximately $125 million generated by the artificially-high rates, residents are being hit with monthly utility bills that are double or triple the normal monthly charges.

"I am getting bills for more than $1,000," said Dr. Laura Cisneros, who along with scores of protesters picketed the PUB meeting Monday. "Our community is suffering."

"This is not an error," said Ezequiel Silva, a truck company owner. "This is a robbery. "They knew by 2015 that Tenaska had not acquired the customers for the 600 MW but they continued to lie to the residents and the city commission that it would get built."

Martinez and Bruciak knew that the energy shortage projections were flawed and exaggerated, that Tenaska had not found subscribers for the 600 MWs that was required to initiate the plant's construction, but continued pushing the narrative and allowed the utility to continue with the high rates for its construction.    

So what does PUB chair Saenz, who runs Spanky's Burgers on Martinez's property, have to say about the debacle?

"It is clearly important that we respond to the audit in a measured, factual, and deliberate manner that takes into account what is best for the community, the City, and Brownsville PUB," she read in a  statement issued Tuesday.

We must do this quickly and in such a way that we capture the narrative of the audit with our collective objectives in mind with the aim of minimizing negative external impacts to our ability to function effectively in the future."

Capture the narrative of the audit? Minimize negative external impacts? And then here comes the killer. Despite the forensic audit firm's solidly documented audit findings, Saenz still clings to a lame excuse that " there are some potential factual issues" and that "we need a common set of agreed facts."

What?

Is this something like the "alternative facts" phrase used by Kellyanne Conway U.S. Counselor to president Donald Trump?

Let's see. 

Bruciak and Martinez, her boss, hid the fact that Tenaska could not find subscribers in a glutted electric market to buy the 600 MWs since 2015, and that Tenaska unilaterally terminated its partnership to build the plant in 2017. 

Neither Martinez nor Bruciak told the PUB board or the city commission that the project was dead and spoke out against lowering the PUB rates. And the city's commercial and residential customers continued to pay the artificially high rates.

PUB says that it used some of the $125 million to subsidize the fuel charges and lessen the pain. But they argued against lowering the rates because it would not allow them to continue buying right-of-ways for gas and water lines for a plant that was not going to be built. And now that it has no more Tenaska money to use, it claims that the higher bills for consumers – which have doubled and tripled– are the result of the higher fuel charges and bills residents are receiving. 

At least two PUB board members – Mayor Trey Mendez and Art Rendon – decided that discretion was the better part of valor and stayed away from the public meeting and participated by Zoom instead.

Mendez – as mayor – is an ex oficio member of the PUB board and replaces Martinez's on the board. Rendon retired from the Brownsville Independent School District. A close relative works in the Martinez Law Firm, although some reports incorrectly stated that it was his son who worked there after graduate school.

In an interview after the audit was released, an unrepentant Martinez said that the PUB should be allowed to keep the remaining $29 million and that ratepayers should view them as "savings." 

Saenz's statement argues that "in order to determine how to proceed with what’s best for our community, we need a common base of agreed facts and...feel it prudent to allow those listed in the report a specified period of time to respond to the opinions and allegations specified in the audit."

 She said the PUB needed time to "conduct an expedited review of the audit, either internally or with the possible help of outside professionals, to help us sort through the facts and present an accurate foundation for moving forward."

"...we aim to engage with the City to address in an expedited fashion the mistakes that were made, the root causes, and make whatever structural and/or personnel changes that are needed to ensure the Brownsville Public Utilities ship returns quickly without delay to its core mission and the major challenges we and the entire utility industry are facing."

Entire utility industry? Surely you jest. We're talking about who messed up our local city-owned utility, it's administration, and it's board which you head. Look no further. Are any board members associated with any of the vendors that got paid with Tenaska funds?

How about some of you removing yourselves from the PUB chair and board? How about allowing someone without your obvious conflicts of interest to guide the USS PUB into an honest course that does not allow lying  and fraudulent politicians and bureaucrats to continue to gouge the long-suffering Brownsville ratepayers?