On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

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This change.

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With Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for On the Record this week.

I'm Randy Beamer, and we are starting this week with something they talked about, a Bexar County Commissioners court just this week.

And that is a problem they've had for a time.

And what to do about it?

Jail overcrowding.

Joining us is Bexar County Commissioner, precinct three, Grant Moody.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Absolutely.

First of all, the latest problems on this, there is a tracker of the numbers of inmates at the jail daily, and it is up to 300 daily.

And you talked about that and what to do about it this week.

Well, we're we're overcapacity.

Our jail has a capacity of 5075.

We're actually 300 over that capacity today.

Most of those inmates are out at surrounding county facilities.

But but it's a real problem, and it has an impact on taxpayers.

You annualize that cost.

It's over $7 million a year.

And this problem is to outsource.

Yes.

Yes.

At the inmates.

Yeah.

$7 million a year to outsource those inmates.

And the problem's only getting worse.

We've already expanded those contracts once.

And we're going to have to come up with a plan.

There's likely going to have to be some additional contracts in the short term, but in the mid term and long term, you know, we have to start talking about what we're going to do because this county's growing quickly.

And we also have some some changes in the state legislature when it comes to bonds.

And when inmates can be released on bond that, you know, obviously are there to try to, provide safety for the community, but that's going to mean that additional inmates are going to, to be held in the jail, which is going to add several hundred additional inmates to the already overcrowded situation that we have.

And the jail has been expanded.

This big addition there, there has been talk in the past of building a new jail.

Do you think as we go on with this kind of $7 million cost, that that will be looked at as more feasible?

Well, I just think we should put all the potential options on the table.

You know, I'm agnostic to the to the solution.

I just think we need to recognize that there's a problem and that, you know, commissioners court, the county owns the jail.

And this is a problem.

It's on our watch.

We need to think about all the potential solutions.

I've advocated having a study to explore what those options look like, what the cost would be.

What makes the most sense for the county going forward?

But I think everything should be on the table.

And let's do what makes sense for Bexar County.

Would there be, aside from maybe another addition there if there's room at that site?

What about in terms of moving the population out faster or getting them through the court system?

Those who are waiting in the jail to be indicted.

How could that be addressed by the county?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's a great question.

And and, the Da Joe Gonzalez came to court, yesterday and spoke about the high risk intake, case backlog that his office has been working on, which is, he's claiming that numbers 5200 now.

But what we uncovered during that conversation is they've actually changed how they classify what is high risk, based on the date that his office actually, gets those cases.

So we don't really have a definitive sense of whether we're making progress on that front or not.

But that is a huge contributing factor overall, because we have 1700 inmates awaiting indictment in the jail today.

What do you think might happen in the legislature and how do you do that as a study?

Say you voted for a study today.

Legislature comes in and says, we need you to keep more inmates in the jail longer.

What's the timeline, you think, on the study and when you might vote on a possible solution?

Well, I think ultimately voting on a solution is going to take time.

But, you know, if a study takes six months to 12 months, ultimately we're going to get a definitive answer on the the state legislation here in the coming months.

Obviously, at the end of session, I think that we can incorporate that into the discussion about what our options are.

What what's included in this study going forward.

But, that'll just help us make a better decision with that.

Bexar County, voting we talked about last year, spent some money, the county commissioners, on trying to get more people to vote and outreach program.

You were critical of that earlier or what's the outcome of that?

Disappointing.

I guess it was disappointing.

It was disappointing, for several reasons.

First of all, I oppose this because this is something the county has never done before.

And our own elections administrator came to court, said this is this is a bad idea.

I don't support it.

We don't have the resources right now to support it.

The court went forward with it anyway.

Ultimately, we spent $260,000 on voter registration efforts.

But the key takeaway there is the ultimate number of new registered voters was far less, was a fraction of what was committed to by that contractor.

CGS, came to commissioners court and talked about tens of thousands of new voters.

And ultimately we had less than a thousand new voters, and we spent $260,000 taxpayer dollars.

I'm guessing you won't be doing that in the future.

Well, I hope not, Randy.

Clearly this was a waste of taxpayer money.

But, you know, there's there's, there's been pushback on what the actual numbers were.

And what we found when we dove into the research was the numbers that they're claiming because they're claiming 15,000.

But that is over the span of time of four months, not not, tied to the election.

And also it includes, a bunch of duplicates and voter address changes.

Only about 25% of those contacts were actually new registrations.

Another, topic you've talked about this week is moving forward on potentially renovating a building out of Fort Sam Houston, that area for, all the people that are going to be coming or some of the people from the Defense Health Agency, and that has hasn't gotten the publicity, maybe that it will yet.

But this is going to bring a lot of jobs, a lot of people.

How much would the county spend on this?

Yeah.

So this is a huge opportunity for Bexar County and San Antonio.

Military city, USA, military Medicine City, USA.

I think that this is a slam dunk, a home run for Bexar County.

So ultimately, this would renovate a building on Fort Sam at the cost of about $30 million.

That 30 would be split ten with the city Senate, the county and another ten in state grants that we would be applying for.

And that would bring hundreds of new jobs, potentially up to 1000 new high paying for Defense Health Agency jobs to Bexar County.

And that would just reinforce our position, you know, in, in terms of medical technology, in terms of military medicine and have billions of dollars of economic impact on Bexar County.

And that would be on the East side, not in the in the same general area, but somewhat close to, the Frost Bank center and that area.

That's kind of in question.

Now, if the Spurs and would build a new city county would build a new stadium downtown.

That's another issue that you're looking at right now.

Where are you on that issue?

Well, it's really complicated.

You have the the Spurs on the private side, obviously asking for this, wanting to to bring that arena downtown, a new arena.

You have potential public funding from the city of San Antonio, potential sources at the county.

I believe, you know, some of the reporting has been an error on this.

The county's been pretty transparent.

We have the venue tax, which includes, rental cars and a hotel tax, that that is used specifically for venues.

However, we have to take care of the Frost Bank center.

We have to take care of the Freeman Coliseum.

We have to take care of the rodeo grounds.

And that's been our first priority.

So we're trying to better understand what the cost there will be in terms of investment to protect those assets.

Before we talk about exactly what a contribution to the Spurs arena would look like.

But ultimately, I think it's important to realize that whatever is put forward will actually be decided by voters.

It will not be decided by commissioners court.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

I know we're going to hear a lot more about that, a lot more about all that you've been talking about, especially with the jail, because it's just in our consciousness again, making headlines.

Thank you very much.

Grant Moody, precinct three County commissioner.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

This week and last week, the big news out of Washington, of course, has been the tariffs and their effects on all kinds of things.

But that news doesn't just affect Washington, of course, affects the rest of the country, especially Texas and especially the border.

An expert we talked with a couple of weeks ago, there in Laredo, he came up and talk with us is Gerry Swivel, who is the executive vice president of corporate and international division of the International Bank of Commerce.

Thank you very much for coming in.

I know you work, a lot of other, titles as well.

You've worked on, negotiating NAFTA and the US, Mexico, Canada trade agreement.

We're working when we talked with people in Mexico and going to Washington, trying to limit maybe the effects of the tariffs, if not the tariffs themselves, tell us what's going on down there in Laredo right before we talked.

You say you're living the dream as well as living the nightmare right now.

Well, thank you for having me, Randy.

And yes, well, what I meant to say is that, we've been living a nightmare of uncertainty.

And, and trying to get clarity, because uncertainty is not good for business.

We've been enjoying so many years of of, great economic vitality, through ports like Laredo.

And, and seeing, the, the importance of, of, of three countries working to be competitive globally.

And we've been the beneficiaries of that, you know, in Texas, Texas being the number one export state and, and all the 28 ports that Texas has with Mexico.

We've been great beneficiary of of good sound, trade policies with our trade partners like Mexico, which is the number one trade port.

And I know your, office there right off 35 and Laredo, you can see some of the truck traffic with the tariffs.

And you said, you know, we hear about 25% tariff on Mexico and we're not sure, you know, you said that's kind of on and off or some of the tariffs have been on and off.

What kind of effects of you seen on the traffic.

Well, the traffic has been pretty much steady as we've seen it.

I you're right.

I, I look out my window and it's 35 and then I've got the, the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railroad, that is right adjacent to to our back building here in Laredo.

So, we monitor a lot of that trade by the volume of trucks.

We have over 20,000 trucks crossing here in Laredo, the port of Laredo, through our commercial bridges and our our two pedestrian vehicle bridges.

It's it's it's been steady.

Some of it was an uptick in the last couple of months because the uncertainty created certain companies that were either, you know, bloating their their inventories or stockpiling in anticipation of what was the what the tariffs were going to look like.

They were announced here last week.

So now we have the scenario that we have more clarity as to the the amounts of the of of the tariffs that will be imposed in our top trading partners, Canada and Mexico.

But also it's not just it's not just those 2 or 3 pointers, it's other parts of the world as well.

So I think the measurement of of that level of activity will come in the months to come.

And we'll be measuring that, steadily.

We hope that that, that these tariffs are not going to be there for any extended period of time.

We understand that our President Trump's strategy of using us as a weapon, as he said, to, to really bring to the table to look for fair trade, we all want that.

But the reality I'm a free trader.

I'm not I'm not a tariff about a tariff guy.

But we should be all be shooting for zero tariffs in order to create the best model for competitiveness.

What about Mexico's response to this?

As I said, you've been to Mexico City.

You've been to Washington recently.

What do you know about, both the response to this right now and what's going on behind the scenes to try to to try to work on getting that tariff lowered.

You know, I've been I've been following this very closely, and I would kudos to President Schimmel because she's kept a clear head and with her team and and having dialog and being at the table with, with the Trump administration, I think she's she's handled very well.

She's been calm.

She's not, overreacted.

And and what you know is that, one of the concerns were is that for every action, there could have been an equal or opposite reaction.

That means that she going to retaliate, and she could still retaliate.

But but I think she has been willing to to have dialog and discuss the benefits of a strong relationship, how we're stronger together than if we are just, competing against each other.

So, I think she's handled it, you know, in these few months, remarkably well.

What about the short term impact, at least on Texas and on the border, as you see.

I understand the numbers are about 30 days behind in terms of how much trade is coming across each way.

What how much are we going to be losing in Texas and especially in Laredo, because there's a lot of businesses based there based on, the traffic.

So let me share with you, you know, some numbers.

Just to put it in perspective, auto generates about 40% of the North-South trade between United States, Mexico and Canada just reported.

So that's more than LA Long Beach.

That's more than than Chicago.

That's more than New York.

So the critical components of that trade has been in the auto sector of the electronics sector.

And they are culture sector and others.

So, Texas alone is the number one export states, and therefore Mexico is our number one trade partner.

And therefore Texas has the most at stake.

Texas exports, which are the ones that generate Texas jobs, is what really, has been a major component of our success here in Texas.

And, and therefore, we have to really measure and monitor and look at these policies and, and see the impact that they would have in terms of trade dollars.

It figures we were looking at Texas, that ability to export state, you know, generating over almost $1 billion of trade.

And when you look at those types of jobs of export jobs really are very solid, well-paid jobs.

So, it all adds value to the whole Texas economy.

So our relationship with Mexico is very critical, are very important.

And keep in mind that the I-35 corridor, which is the North-South corridor, is, is constructed through the heart of Texas.

So Texas has been a great beneficiary of of these South policies with Mexico.

In addition to that, if you take into consideration that what we lived with before NAFTA, NAFTA was intended to basically bring a framework agreement to reach zero tariffs between it, between Canada and Mexico.

But prior to NAFTA, we had tariffs, 30% in Mexico.

So we had terms with Canada 12% and U.S. terms were 6%.

So when President Trump says, what's the difference here?

What was there before?

We all thought, let's put it at zero.

And he's brought that up before in the during the campaign and said we should all be looking at zero tariffs.

But when we see the unfairness of some folks say some countries say, well, I'll charge a share on this one, but I'll charge you, you know, 20 on this one.

Well, that's not fair trade.

And I think that's that's what we've had to experience right now, is that they say, look, we're we're going to bring this into some form of more reciprocity.

And a long is going to take will depend on the the willingness of the country to come in and sit down and have dialog so that we shoot for a fair trade policy of zero tariffs or low tariffs versus different tariffs for different sectors.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Man who knows a lot.

They're right in the middle of it.

Gerry Schaeuble of International Bank of Commerce in Laredo, thank you very much for talking with us.

Thank you for having me, Randy.

Now to join us is editor in chief of the San Antonio Current Sanford now one, who has written more about measles and the reaction to it, from across the state.

First of all, where we are in this outbreak after the second death.

And, what is the reaction, at least at the state level?

And.

Yeah, I mean, we, on Tuesday we came out with new numbers, shows 505 cases, statewide.

And that's double the number that were reported a month earlier.

Are more than double.

We hit 223 at that point.

And it's now spread to 21 counties.

As you know, we had a near miss in San Antonio when somebody from one of the infected counties came to visit, weeks ago, it was highly populated places like UTSA, the Riverwalk, etc..

While I think the local health experts in West Texas were the epicenter, of the infection is are, you know, making attempts to corral it, there have been a lot of, experts who have been puzzled why, Governor Greg Abbott has not been more out front of this and other, top, elected officials.

I mean, Abbott at this point has issued all of one significant public statement about the outbreak, even though it's making national news.

You know, and even when we pressed him, we reached out to him for comment after the second child died from the outbreak.

You know, there was no public statement from his press office.

We had to basically elicit one.

And he described it as a heartbreaking tragedy and reiterated that Texas will deploy all necessary resources, including immunization teams, to the affected areas.

But I think what a lot of public health experts are hoping he would say, is that getting vaccinated is the best way to combat this.

This disease, which is highly infectious, that.

He sent the immunization teams but didn't say how important they are or vaccines.

Are.

Exactly, exactly.

And that silence is really alarming to a lot of public health experts who point out that we've now seen the, the outbreak spread to New Mexico, we've seen it go up to Oklahoma.

And it's not just concentrated in Texas around gains County along the the New Mexico border there.

You know, as people have traveled, we've seen it migrate to other counties.

Is his reaction or lack thereof, really surprising given the given the politics of it these days, with a large part of the Republican base at least.

And yeah, vaccine skepticism has grown exponentially since the pandemic.

I mean, we've seen, a lot of right wing political figures espousing this stuff.

We've seen it's all over the internet.

And what we saw during the pandemic itself with Greg Abbott, you know, initially sort of being slow to close, the close the state when, and close down businesses and issue guidance in terms of, you know, that sort of thing.

And then it even went further than that after you saw Shelley Luther.

Right.

The Dallas hair salon owner who basically went to jail because she wouldn't close down her, her, you know, her, her business.

And then you saw Don Huffines, former state senator, Allen West, the former state GOP chair, railing against Abbott, for, for, you know, going along with this crazy notion of closing things down during the pandemic.

And after that, I think you saw a real change in Abbott's attitude.

Not only was he a, you know, sort of hurrying, up the opening of businesses he was going after and, you know, sort of legally trying to stop municipalities and businesses and private enterprise from instituting mask ban, mask orders and, you know, requiring people to get vaccinated.

There were school districts that were saying, you know, if you want to work for us, you're going to have to get vaccinated.

And, you know, he repeatedly went to court to stop that.

So I think he's kind of painted himself into a corner.

He's basically trying to appeal to this anti-vaxxer crowd that makes up the, you know, the, a significant portion of the Republican base, right?

Any voters, the primary voters, the 3% of the Texas, you know, Texas population that actually votes in the Republican primary.

So he's trying to appease them.

Yet at the same time, we've got this, this growing health crisis.

And, you know, Peter Hotez, one of the, Baylor, School of Medicine, one of the top infectious disease experts, not just in the state but in the country, who said that, you know, based on the number of deaths we've seen so far, he thinks that the 505 cases is underreported, that it may be closer to a thousand.

And real quickly on the local election, we're talking about primary voters as a whole, separate election.

But the mayoral race for 27 candidates, you've looked at at least the top, fundraisers.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

You know, this is, as you point out, this is a very congested, race and.

Just it.

Is.

Yeah, I think a lot of people in it, you know, and it's been interesting because we've seen outside money coming in.

Gina Ortiz Jones.

Right.

Who, an undersecretary of the Air Force under, the Biden administration, you know, she's had a bunch of money coming in from Democratic sources.

You've got Rolando Pablos, former Texas secretary of state, a Greg Abbott ally.

Pull in a lot of, money, including from the Texas Economic Fund, an Abbott aligned PAC.

And better Altamirano.

The the, tech, entrepreneur who gained a very early kind of a lot of people, you know, kind of excited about him, a charismatic figure, he's pulled in a lot of money.

The interesting wildcard here recently is Manny Poleis.

District eight.

Councilman has thrown $324,000 of his own money.

He's an attorney, so I think he may be able to do that, into the base.

So that makes for an interesting thing, because he's throwing it in late, and you really want to have a lot of money in the home stretch as you're trying to close the deal, especially because there's not a lot of name recognition.

Among these.

UTSA poll says most people don't know.

Yeah.

Most anyone.

Yeah.

So really, I think there's a lot of last minute scrambling to get people excited about some of these candidates who they just don't know a whole lot about.

And your pick who you think is going to be in the runoff.

Man, don't do this to me, okay?

I seriously, I have no idea.

I think it really is.

It really is an intriguingly wide open race.

And I think all we really know is that we're destined for a runoff.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Sanford Nowlin, for talking about congestion and and everything else.

Should I have said constipation?

Oh, I think congestion was a good way to put it on.

Kale, thank you.

And thank you for watching this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again or any previous shows as well as download the podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org.

I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho