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.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are starting with one of the new council members of the city of San Antonio, one who won an open seat without having to go to a runoff.

That is, district four Council member Edward.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Randy.

Appreciate it.

Before we get to what your goals are right now and looking down the road to what you have, even just for this summer, I know it's a lot of things to get to.

Tell us about growing up here in San Antonio.

You're a very young person, but you left to go to college.

You immediately came right back and worked for council members.

Now you're succeeding them?

Yeah, absolutely.

I was born and raised in district four, grew up in the Valley High Area.

And I, you know, when I was young, my dad would take me downtown to, to visit, and I thought he would laugh.

He said, you know, you thought it was like a different town back in those days.

So to me, there was just something magical about this place.

My whole family was born and raised here also.

And in high school, I fell in love with the civic, engagement part of it, civic politics.

So I knew that after volunteering on some campaigns, participating in, say, 2020, that I wanted to come back and affect, change here and do some policy work.

So I went to college to get a degree in political science, came back to San Antonio.

Do you know in.

New Orleans, you guys did not want to do politics in New Orleans?

It's a very different place.

Oh, yeah.

So I came back and essentially a cold called, racial down his office, and they said free help will take you.

No problem.

So I was there for two full months, full time job there for free.

And then they asked me to, do part, full time there.

So I started in 2016.

So you've been in district four at for Racial Donya and then for Doctor Adriano.

Rosa Garcia?

Yes.

When you grew up, did you want to be a council person?

So, you know, I was interested in politics in the age of seven.

And I really in high school, I figured I wanted to do something locally.

I didn't really know what exactly at that point.

I didn't know what district law was.

And that where I grew up was district four.

Where my grandparents grew up was district four.

My parents were raised, that wasn't an identity for us.

It was just kind of south side, southwest side of San Antonio.

So after working for Rei, for a little bit of time, I felt the connection because I realized how much of my life had spent in that council district without my knowledge.

So, you know, I was helping folks.

I grew up with, helping my grandparents.

Neighbors.

And so that meant a lot.

So this is home to me.

This is where I grew up.

This is where I bought my home.

So I have no problem.

Represent this.

Area.

What are the problems that you grew up with?

What do you remember and what are you working on now?

Some of it's still the same problems, I'm sure, of the generational poverty and others that have been mentioned across the city.

What, what has changed?

What hasn't in your district?

Yeah, well, I would say growing up, you know, I was very thankful to have a really great childhood, but we grew up in Valley High, and all I remember is how bad our sidewalk was.

And then we did have foundation problems in our home.

And so that was a constant thing in that area.

We had heard about that.

And I for the longest time, I thought the city would just could fix the sidewalk, not realizing much later.

It was our responsibility to fix that.

You know, my grandparents grew up more on the south side of San Antonio, or that's where they had their homes.

And so over time, you saw a little bit of disinvestment in those areas, right?

When my grandmother bought her home in 1971.

Very different than what it is today.

And so I knew that coming back and adding more, city services and then also building more of a neighborhood together was important.

When my parents grew up, they all knew their neighbors.

They were out on the street.

Their neighbors knew that.

Whose children they were.

And so you had people watching out for you.

And it's a little different.

These days as you as you look to the future.

You had talked about when you were running everything from stray dogs to new jobs.

What are your priorities?

Yeah.

So I would say access to city services.

We have some core city services in San Antonio that my residents don't feel.

They're getting enough of, which is code compliance.

Animal care services and SaPD, illegal dumping in as an example.

They feel their needs are not being met.

So that's the number one thing is mobilization of those and reformatting how we do some of that work.

So one great example upcoming is our code compliance strategic plan that we hope will kind of refocus co compliance to what the community wants.

Now what about the makeup of the new city council, a younger maybe more progressive at one end, maybe more conservative at the other?

We don't really know much about the mayor, Gina Ortiz Jones, yet.

How do you see it breaking down the splits over different issues in the upcoming council?

Knowing some of these.

People, the vast majority of council votes are unanimous or are all together.

Right?

So when we see splits, those are pretty rare.

And some of the bigger issues in San Antonio, it is a younger council.

I'm not the youngest, but, I think there will be some new ways of looking at problems.

And that's also trying to find root causes on those problems.

So.

Well, I do think it will be a more progressive council in the typical sense.

I think there's going to be a focus on, you know, community wellbeing.

How do we support residents, how do we get our city services to be top of mind, and better performing city?

What about as you come up with the budget over the summer?

The city staff has done a lot of the preparation.

Where are you going to push for more money?

I know you've talked about animal care services.

Where else are you looking for?

More money for street lighting.

We are way behind on our street lighting program.

And I think getting back to the revenue that has gone back to the in the past couple of years and putting that funds those moneys into the top priorities that our residents say to us, through the survey is a great way to actually fund and assist what they want.

What about, a couple of things the federal government has done the Trump administration that, trickles down to San Antonio.

The effects of the federal budget cuts as well as the state cut.

The governor just vetoed a line item for funding for, the cyber military command at port RSA and also immigration rates.

Can a city do something about that?

And they've injected themselves with some would say, into, border issues, immigration in the past.

What do you expect to happen?

I expect us to work with nonprofits that do this work on a daily basis.

Right?

So we can't be there for all of those problems.

But we have organizations across the city that do do that work.

So in the face of budget cuts, we have to, try to reduce any cutting to those entities, because they're the lifeline for a lot of residents.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

And we'll learn more about you in the coming days, especially because we'll be talking about money and budget and you'll be busy.

Next is district four new council representative Edward McGuire.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thank you.

Randi.

Appreciate it.

Governor Abbott made news a few days ago with some vetoes of bills and parts of bills, and one of those is cutting tens of millions of dollars for a school, a summer lunch program for kids.

Here to talk about that and more is State Representative Diego Bernal, district 123 of San Antonio.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Good to see.

First of all, out of this last session and what and these vetoes, what what stands out the most?

Well, I think the one you mentioned about the it's the only thing that was stricken from the budget, which is $60 million for a summer reading program.

That's that's a big one.

I know the topic of conversation is the THC one that he vetoed, which I actually agree with that veto.

And then a top of mind for me, there are some criminal justice reform.

Is there?

A lot of us really liked him in a bipartisan way that he vetoed?

Maybe we'll look at those again in the special session.

But those three or the three that stand out the most in terms of the vetoes, tell.

Us about the public schools money, that program, what will it mean in San Antonio?

So there was a program around Covid time that provided EBT cards, grocery cards, for families with students on free and reduced lunch for the summer.

And Texas decided not to participate, which I think was a mistake.

You know, had continued to decide not to participate even when the money was right there.

The $60 million was for this upcoming budget was to pay for the administrative cost.

Right.

Just so the for the state to to run the program and access about $400 million to participate in this program.

And access that at that federal money.

Yes.

So $60 million from the state to run it, $400 million from the feds to pay for it.

And it is the only thing in the entire budget that was vetoed at $60 million.

And I know $60 million is a lot of money to you.

And I, but in the grand scheme of things for the state, it's really not that much.

And so it strikes me as being cruel.

You're sort of gambling with people's health locally.

It would mean that about 280,000 kids who would be eligible aren't going to get it.

And it's and that's.

This year or.

Next year, this coming budget cycle.

So we work in two year cycles.

So in this upcoming budget cycle for the summer, there's about 280,000 kids who would be eligible for that program that that the money was there to do it.

And that was what was striking.

Now, he said he did this because there was uncertainty about the federal money, that 400 million or parts of that would be coming in.

And so you spent 60.

You may not get 400 anyway.

Right?

Your thoughts?

I think that's hollow, because we had a chance to participate in that during Covid time, and we decided not to.

We had chance to participate in the next round of the money was right there and we decided not to.

Now they're saying, well, we don't know if the money's going to be there.

Look, there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty in federal government right now.

We went ahead and had school finance, and we don't know if there's going to be Department of Education.

Right.

We participate in border security not knowing exactly what that's going to look like any given year.

I don't think that the fact that the argument being that the money's not there may not be there.

I don't think that's real.

I think it's just continues this trend of saying, hey, one of the things that we like to do here is be cool when it comes to children in feeding, in food in particular, that is a calling card of the state.

And it just continues that.

There are other, vetoes are a line item veto.

Anyway, this week, the $50 million, I believe, or 60 for the Cyber Command here in San Antonio.

What does that veto really do or mean for us?

Well, there's two sides of that.

One is that there's the new Cyber command at UTSA.

And that's a tremendous investment.

And so the governor's saying, look, we're already doing that.

This is redundant.

I disagree.

I think that given the cyber security headquarters that we are globally, that you can never have too much on top of that.

What a tremendous waste of time to all the people locally who spent time and money trying to secure that funding, getting it, getting it through.

To be clear, the other money that he says is redundant is already earmarked for San Antonio through this.

Right?

That so so UTSA is is going to sort of be a cyber command.

Both in terms of operations and training.

The other money for San Antonio was to sort of be a part of that, to do some of the similar work.

The governor said it was redundant.

I disagree, I don't think you can ever have too much, especially given how important San Antonio is and how much work we're already doing.

This idea, that one is enough.

We've already touched it, so it doesn't need more.

I disagree with.

Does that throw a wrench into plans?

We've heard that it could of working with the Air Force.

Will the Air Force be less likely to do something here?

We've already, you know, concerned about Pete Hegseth not committing to bases in San Antonio in the long term?

I think it puts us at a disadvantage.

Right.

I think that as a city that is not only dependent on the military, but that's our identity.

We call ourselves Military City USA.

We had something set up with partners ready to go.

People would spend millions of dollars in several years teeing this up.

Finally got it through both chambers, the House and the Senate.

And then for the governor to say, well, we're doing something over here.

So that's enough.

What is short sighted?

What is the communication between the governor in the House and Senate?

Because, you know, the Dan Patrick THC versus Greg Abbott now in the summer seem to come very late, like they weren't talking to each other.

Right.

Same thing on some of these other bills.

What did you expect on this?

Did you get any indication.

Normally it's more collaborative.

Normally it's more collaborative.

Even as a Democrat, I know that.

Maybe not me, but a lot of my colleagues are in conversation with the governor in the governor's office this session.

It felt very much like this is what I want.

Go do it.

And we saw that in the last election round as he took out a lot of my colleagues because of a vote they did or didn't take on school vouchers.

Right, right.

And so it very much felt like, go do my bidding.

And you see, in his relationship now with lieutenant governor that that approach isn't going to work, right, is it that they're at odds?

Usually they're on the same page now, they could be any further.

What does that mean for this special session coming up July 21st?

THC is, I guess, the big issue.

There are others, right?

What do you think is going to happen there?

I don't know, right now.

The special sessions are a little more substantive than normally are.

Sometimes they feel like a whole session of just virtue signaling, which demonstrate how far right we are.

This feels a little more substantive, but I don't know how they repair that relationship.

Not that I'm super interested in how well they get along, but as someone who has to work in the building, I'm hyper aware that that relationship is important to the work that we want to do and the things we want to get done.

I don't know what it looks like right now.

And if people don't know what we're talking about, the THC ban is what was passed by the House and Senate sent to the governor.

Banning THC completely would kill off a $5 billion plus industry.

And to be clear, I think maybe with 1 or 2 exceptions on the Republican side, the entire San Antonio delegation did not want that ban.

Right.

We voted against the ban.

It's one of the few times we agree with the governor's veto.

But for the way that the building works, we don't know what that veto of a Dan Patrick party looks like or means for their relationship moving forward.

Is there any indication that they've talked since this Sunday night veto?

The last I heard is a TV told without a conversation, a communication at all that it cut everybody by surprise.

He'd put it off longer than he normally does.

I suspect they've had a conversation since, but I don't know what that was like.

It can't.

Nothing new can happen unless Dan Patrick allows it to happen, right?

The way I described Lucas in The Governor in the Senate is he's air traffic control, right?

Like he it's the governor receives bills and sets priorities, but the lieutenant governor pretty much can do whatever he wants there.

He can set bills.

He can say something's going to pass or not pass.

He can change calendars.

Most of the time I don't like when he does that every once in while he does that.

And I said, well, that helped me or helped us.

So that's okay.

But, he is much more of a policy maker than the governor is.

And so what that looks like and what they agree to ahead of time, we'll have to see.

Will you have any talks about what might be in a compromise bill before July 21st, or it starts then, or.

I think that what normally happens is even if the two principals don't talk, their teams start to talk.

And as we lead up and lead up into a special session, we start to hear what's being discussed, what's a priority.

And sometimes sometimes it's it's solely on that issue.

Sometimes it's, well, let's do this.

This is what we want.

We know it makes you not so happy, but we'll throw in these other things.

How about if you.

Throw in redistricting and that possibility, will that happen.

You think will he put that in the special session?

Look, I'm at a point now, I've been doing this long enough where I can always distinguish between what I think and what I hope.

So I certainly hope not.

And I hope not.

Not just because I think it'd be widely illegal and unfair, but also because I believe to some degree in the independence of the legislature and both bodies, redistricting was not a part of the conversation at all for the whole session in the years leading up to it at all.

But now President Trump.

All of a sudden, one person says one word and we act like our dad is telling us what to do.

We have to go and do it.

I just I don't respect that kind of knee jerk response.

So I'd like to think that we're more thoughtful than that.

I'm probably wrong.

Well, I'd like to think that we'll.

Find out in July.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Appreciate it.

State Representative Diego Bernal, district 123.

Thanks.

I appreciate it very much.

On Reporters roundtable this week, there are plans for a new data center just outside New Braunfels, a data center that would have its own natural gas power plant right there.

And that is a trend across the state.

Now, joining us to tell us all about it is Dylan Bradshaw, who is a reporter of Inside Climate News.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks.

This, data center expansion is going on all over the country, but it's, I guess, fairly new that they are building natural gas plants on site, wanting to build a lot more.

Yes, indeed.

It's a result of the rush.

The sort of gold rush on building data centers.

They can't get power fast enough through the grid.

Not nearly as fast as they want it.

So the easiest, quickest solution is to build your own power plant.

Right there on site data centers.

People might not understand exactly what that means.

This is like a supercomputer farm that can do all kinds of stuff for all kinds of different people.

Sure.

Yeah.

Actually, almost nobody understands what it means.

But it is a big, complex of supercomputers that are built, to lease out to tenants who might be like meta or I companies.

So they're big server farms that can train artificial intelligence, run artificial intelligence, mined cryptocurrency, all kinds of things like that.

And they're controversial in part because of the noise just from the center, but also the natural gas power plants.

Again, the people you talked to, some sisters up in New Braunfels about that.

Power plants are very loud, and create emissions.

And, you know, for quiet rural areas and small towns, it's a very large presence.

Totally change your way of life.

So lots of and oftentimes these projects happen in rural areas on open land where it's cheap, where lots the neighbors were used to peace and quiet.

So that's why it's ruffled feathers, you know, lots of places where.

Things pop up.

Yeah.

You said lots of places.

You were surprised, you said, by the number of these things at least being planned, if not yet approved.

Oh, yeah.

These are all over, and it's hard to keep up with the.

I found one, a half mile from my home in Lockhart.

A whole campus of them, actually, the one you mentioned in New Braunfels.

There are two others right down the road that are proposed.

One of the biggest in the world is in Abilene.

There's a few south of San Antonio and in West Texas.

They're all over.

What about the impact on, climate with all the emissions now?

Natural gas, of course.

Better, we believe, than coal.

But still, some of these, turbines have what you call peckers on them, and they're not as good for the environment as the other.

Yeah.

It, has pretty substantial climate impacts.

And this big boom in the gas bill that came as a surprise to lots of people.

Gas does burn a lot cleaner than coal.

However, there are a lot of leaks in the gas supply chain that pipe it all the way from West Texas straight to these power plants.

And when that raw methane gas leaks out, it has a warming effect 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

So in addition to the emissions from the smokestacks, there's supply chain leaks all along that add up to pretty profound impacts of the climate.

And it seems just a few years ago, when we were talking about these data centers building up, we have some in San Antonio, that they were talking about using renewable energy.

It's a high tech data center.

You would think it would be high tech power, but there's not enough.

Is that the simple reason?

Well, there's several reasons.

One of them that was during the Biden administration and this was real hot talk to say, talk about powering your facility with renewables.

There was a lot of assumption that all next generation industrial growth was going to be powered, next generation energy sources, wind and solar.

However, that didn't really anticipate the scale of the stampede that we're seeing to build these right now.

You know, power demand on our grid has grown very slowly, very small amount over the last 20 years and over just the last year and a half.

It's shot up like crazy in the projections.

So more than ever before, developers are looking at ways to quickly add power.

And Texas is has many policies very supportive of the oil and gas sector.

It's a big, you know, at the heart of this state.

And they've positioned gas well to be you know, that predominant fuel source.

How much power can they produce these small gas plants?

Well, it's all over the map.

The ones that you mentioned, peaker plants, those will not be connected to data centers because those are there to fill intermittent gaps in generation.

A data center will build a power plant that's combined cycle that runs 24 over seven.

However, the addition of data centers to the grid, because many are being connected to the grid, not all of them are building their own power plant adds creates need for many peaker plants, which are often small, you know, 100, 200, 300MW of generation capacity.

Actually, right now there's more than 100 gas power plants proposed across Texas, that we've reported on.

Only a small number of those are connected to data centers.

The rest will feed the grid to meet this overall huge spike in demand.

But there's still a lead time of building these.

And are we going to be stressed on the grid for the next 2 or 3 years or so, while these are being built?

Very likely.

I don't know if I could make that call, but there is a huge global backlog on gas turbines.

Actually, this is a global phenomenon.

We're building gas power plants all over the world fairly quickly.

And many manufacturers are saying 5 to 7 years, to get gas turbines.

So you know, that is really at odds with the way that the developers are talking about it.

And the power plant builders are talking about it as if they'll do this quickly.

We're really going to have to wait and see how it all pans out.

What about battery storage for wind and solar?

How long out do you see that developing before data centers would build their own on site.

Many companies will say it's just a few years out.

The momentum took a serious hit with the change of administrations in Washington.

Trump administration took away a lot of incentives and financial support developing those kinds of technologies.

But, you know, battery storage has grown tremendously over the last few years.

The goal here is to have a battery that can be powered by solar panels by day, and then disperse power consistently all night long until the next morning.

They say it's just a few years away.

But, you know.

They say, yeah, how about the legislature this session?

There were there was concern of the solar and wind industry that they were going to get hit really hard compared to natural gas being encouraged.

What are the bills that actually came out and survived?

Yeah, a lot of the most drastic bills did not survive.

The biggest ones, was the addition of $5 billion to the Texas Energy Fund.

Joined another 5 billion that was allocated last session.

So $10 billion, primarily dedicated to financing natural gas plants, is not available for wind or solar, or battery projects.

So this is really seen as a boost for the gas industry.

And is a big part of the reason for this avalanche of gas plant proposals was making all that money.

Available and go back to the one in New Braunfels, or proposed for New Braunfels and people against it.

What can they do?

What can they say?

And how likely is it that they would stop any of these?

Well, it is not that likely that they would stop any of these.

Texas is open for business or pro-business state.

And a lot of what that means is, you know, cutting red tape and making it less able for neighbors, civilians to come up these projects, slow them down.

Administrative courts.

If a lot of people get together and they can force it into administrative hearings and slow projects down enough that developers essentially give up.

But, that that takes a good fight.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Fascinating.

You can read more about that.

A whole lot of stories Inside Climate News reporter Dylan Bader, thank you very much for coming in.

My pleasure, Randy.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can watch this show again or any previous shows.

You can also download it as a 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.