PUB HAILS P.U.B. CEO BRUCIAK'S "RETIREMENT": "NO ACTION" ON FIRING HIM OR FILING CHARGES ON MISSING $125 MILLION

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

A unanimous Brownsville Public Utility Board announced the "retirement" of CEO John Bruciak and decided to take "no action" on an agenda item that read: “Discussion or possible action Deliberations regarding the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline or dismissal of the CEO of the Brownsville Public Utilities Board.”

But while it was convenient for PUB board members and the bevy of lawyers on both sides to let Bruciak walk away from the position that he has held for the last 40 years, there was no agenda item listed on the special meeting agenda before the board to accept Bruciak's "retirement" and/or to ignore the items listed for consideration on the meeting agenda.

Burciak was coming off a two-month suspension with pay of his $325,000 position which –  at a pro rata basis – amounted to about three months pay  after vacation and sick days were added. In other words, Bruciak was paid some $81,250 for three months not to work.

Then the board members – after discussing the issue in executive session – announced his retirement and then voted unanimously to take no action on the agenda item dealing with his employment or dismissal. 

Should that have been an item placed on the agenda, posted, and a vote taken as required by the Texas Open Meetings Act? The vote might have been no. But by "announcing" that he had taken his retirement, the board tacitly (and illegally?) agreed as a public entity to accept it, and took no action on the item to discipline or dismiss him avoiding an official vote. 

This is legal chicanery at best, and board cowardice at worst.

They are Arthur "Art" Rendon, chair, Joseph L. Hollmann, Ph.D., vice chair, 

Sandra Lopez-Langley, secretary/treasurer, Sandra A. Saenz, member, Patricio Sampayo, member, Jude A. Benavides, Ph.D., member,  and Mayor Juan "Trey" Mendez III, Ex-Officio Member, in his position as the city's elected official on the board.

By accepting his retirement, the board will allow Bruciak to collect his full retirement benefits and did not have to deal with disciplinary action or whether to file potential criminal charges against the CEO or the former Mayor Tony Martinez who, a forensic audit revealed, colluded with the CEO to keep city residents and elected officials in the dark.

“At tonight’s PUB meeting, the board announced that CEO John Bruciak will be retiring,” stated Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez, the ex-officio member of the utility’s Board of Directors. “Additional details will be forthcoming next week.”

“I would like to thank Mr. Bruciak for his 40+ years of service to our public utility,” Mendez stated on social media after announcing
Bruciak’s retirement.

Really, Trey? The board? Aren't you part of it? And did you and the board know that Bruciak was going to "retire" before the meeting was even posted? In fact, were the 60 days of administrative leave with pay approved to give Bruciak the time to give notice to the board within the stipulations of his contract so that he wouldn't lose out on his retirement benefits?  

A forensic report indicated that Bruciak and former ex-oficio PUB board member Mayor Martinez colluded to keep the fact that the  failed project between the Brownsville Public Utilities Board and energy company Tenaska originally launched over a decade ago from the city commission and the public and that they knew that the $500 million plant would never became a reality as early as 2017.

But for several years after that – until 2022 – Brownsville PUB customers were still paying increased rates for the project. Electric rates for the project were raised by 38 percent, water by 20 percent, and as was wastewater by a corresponding amount.

Auditors documented that Bruciak and Martinez intentionally omitted key information to get the PUB board and Brownsville commissioners to maintain the high rates even after its termination,  according to an executive summary.

The report also states, among several other negative findings, that both Bruciak and Martinez failed to notify commissioners about the project's status to defend rate increases no longer necessary. 

BPUB Lead Communications and Public Relations Coordinator Cleiri Quezada confirmed to ValleyCentral the announcement of Bruciak’s retirement Wednesday night. Likewise, she provided no further details, which she said would be made known in the coming week.

In October 2022, the BPUB voted unanimously to place Bruciak on administrative leave with pay for 60 days, following the release of a city-sponsored forensic audit of the utility’s failed  power plant project. Since 2013, the total collected from PUB ratepayers through higher rates was estimated to have totaled between $118 to $125 million to pay for a bond issue that included the purchase of right-of-way for gas and water pipelines between here and Hidalgo County.

Brownsville city commissioners released the forensic audit and review Oct. 5 detailing how the utility board in 2012 raised customers’ electric rates to fund a plan to develop and operate an electric-generating facility, through a deal presented as being a partnership between BPUB and Tenaska, a Nebraska-based energy company.

“What came out of executive session was a slap in every, every citizen of Brownsville’s face. It’s a slap in the face to suspend someone with 60 days – with pay,” Brownsville resident Ezequel Silva told ValleyCentral reporter Derick Garcia after the decision. “When people don’t even have the money to pay the bills. I mean, there’s not even words for it.”

The forensic report showed that even before the proposal to the plant was presented to the city commission in 2011, a consulting firm recommended to the PUB administration (and to Bruciak) to reconsider using "vintage" power usage numbers and energy market projections in justifying the construction of the plant. The auditors showed emails and other communications where Bruciak directed them to continue using the suspect projections'  outdated numbers.

Under the Memorandum Of Understanding signed between the city and Tenaska, 200 MWs of the projected 800 MW to be generated by the plant would be owned by the city and the rest – 600 MWs – were to be sold on the electric market by Tenaska. PUB agreed to pay for $325 million of the projected $500 million cost – 65 percent – and get 25 percent of the energy produced. The money was to be generated by the increase in utility rates from late 2012 to October 2016. They remained at those rates for another three years after 2017 when Tenaska notified PUB it was  stopping its participation.

What they didn't tell anyone was that Tenaska had been given the right in the MOU to unilaterally terminate the agreement if it could not sell the 600 MWs. When citizens and other interested parties tried to see the MOU, Tenaska and PUB objected with the Texas Attorney General through their lawyers claiming the pact included information that would harm the energy producer by letting their competitors know proprietary details of its business.

By 2015, two years after the city commission approved the higher rates, Tenaska told the PUB that it had been unable to sell the 600 MWs and asked – and received – repeated extensions to comply with its end of the agreement. 

But by 2017, Bruciak and his administration were notified that Tenaska had terminated the project as economically non feasible due to other electric-producing plants coming online and the resulting glut of electricity that made selling the 600 MWs impossible.

Still, with the connivance of former mayor Martinez, the city commission and the ratepayers were kept in the dark about the project's termination until 2020 and the rates were not lowered until 2022. By then, PUB announced that only $29 million of the $125 million raised on the backs of city ratepayers through higher rates was left.

And now the board allows Bruciak to float away with his golden parachute by informally accepting his "retirement" which wasn't even on Wednesday's PUB meeting agenda without having to answer for the theft of the $125 million from the poorest community in the United States.

Yeah. Thank Mr. Bruciak for us, Trey.