Monday Musings #28: An Emboldened San Antonio City Council Scores

It was a strong week for the San Antonio City Council majority, which delivered a lesson in governance to Mayor Gina Jones in her first 100 days. The lesson learned? Respecting the “process” after a successful challenge of the mayor’s unilateral and ill-advised attempt to mandate wholesale changes to the way council members get items successfully posted to the official council agenda.

Three council members jump-started the effort – D5 Councilmember Teri Castillo, D7 Councilmember Marina Alderete Gavito, and D10 Councilmember Marc Whyte – who displayed their own understanding of governance by issuing a three-signature memo that allowed them to challenge the mayor in an open meeting of the full council.

Even with an evident majority of eight of 10 council members opposing her, Jones pressed ahead with her power grab at the Wednesday meeting. One day later, however, Jones sent a memo to the council and City Manager Erik Walsh and his senior team suspending her failed directive.

It was heartening to see council members from very different places on the political spectrum stand together at an important moment. The media coverage was unequivocal.

“Mayor Jones reverses course on controversial policy-vetting proposal,” was the San Antonio Report headline on local government reporter Andrea Drusch’s article. 

UTSA political scientist and professor Jon Taylor, a close observer of local government, had this to say to San Antonio Express-News reporter Molly Smith, who covers city hall and local government: “My fear is that anything she wants to push forward at this point — because of what she’s done so far — some may begrudgingly go with it, but there may be others who are like, ‘You know what? She’s weak, she’s insulted us, she doesn’t seem to listen to us, and we’re going to vote no,’” Taylor said.

Click here to read Smith’s cogent analysis of Jones’ opening weeks on the job. My Open Letter to Mayor Jones newsletter, distributed Aug. 11, and Smith’s overview make similar points. From the public reaction I’ve observed this past week, most engaged citizens agree.

A few of Jones’ supporters engaged in social media sniping in response to what I wrote, but most were content to question my motives rather than challenge any of the events and developments I cited.

Jones doubled down on her unilateral efforts to control the public agenda in a Monday press conference when she vowed to pause negotiations with the San Antonio Spurs, perhaps for the rest of the year. She described as “insulting” the existing economic impact study of the proposed major improvements at Hemisfair, and demanded a new study be undertaken. Frankly, I don’t think she has the votes to do so, nor the authority to compel Walsh and staff to do so.

In a late Friday email first reported by the San Antonio Report, Walsh informed the mayor and council that his team and the Spurs are close to completing a non-binding term sheet that will be shared at the council’s Aug. 21 executive session. He suggested council consider approving the term sheet at its Aug. 27 meeting. That’s one week later than the original date the council was scheduled to vote. Walsh did not explain the change.

Smith quoted Jones responding to this past week’s events: “Do I think I would be dealing with some of this stuff if I was a man? No. That’s just the fact.”

The fact?

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” U.S. Senator Patrick Moynihan famously wrote in a 1983 op-ed published in the Washington Post. 

He wasn’t the first to make that observation, in so many words, but his version remains the most succinct. Women in leadership positions do face hurdles not experienced by men. That said,  “some of this stuff,” Mayor, would not be happening if you devoted more energy to building relationships on council. 

Currently, City Hall has devolved into a telenovela —a soap opera. It’s hard not to gawk in disbelief at such a public spectacle, but it would be best for San Antonio and all of us, regardless of who you voted for in the mayor’s race, if Jones would adopt a more collaborative approach to being the leader the city needs right now.

Footnote:

Rest in peace, Bruce Bugg. I disagreed intensely with his decision as chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission to do Gov. Greg Abbott’s bidding and undercut a years-long agreement with the city of San Antonio to convey title to Upper Broadway to the city and allow a multi-million dollar transformation of the important north-south surface artery into a complete street, approved by voters in the 2017 bond.

On the other side of the ledger, Bugg had an outsized impact on San Antonio as the sole trustee of the Tobin Endowment, and in the public-private partnership that led to the transformation of the former Municipal Auditorium into the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, which he co-founded with Mayor Phil Hardberger and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff. He joined entrepreneur and downtown developer Graham Weston and attorney and Kronkosky Foundation managing director Tullos Wells in creating the Community Labs COVID-19 testing initiative during the 2020 pandemic.

Bugg, an entrepreneur trained as a tax attorney, was the driving force behind the creation of Texas Partners Bank, the privately held holding company that includes the Bank of San Antonio, the Bank of Austin, and the Texas Hill Country Bank. A memorial service at the Tobin Center will be held Wednesday at 10 am. My understanding is that Abbott, who has described Bugg as a “close friend,” will deliver a eulogy. That’s a high honor.