As the City of San Antonio gears up for Texas’s 89th legislative session, city leaders have nearly finalized a plan to push back against policies affecting their utilities and regulatory power — both of which gave city officials heartburn the last time lawmakers convened in Austin.
But after three City Council work sessions spent hammering out the city’s lobbying agenda, some critics say the strategy they mapped out still overlooks the bigger picture of protecting local residents from steadily eroding civil liberties.
The Texas Legislature meets every other year for 140 days, with its next session ramping up in January 2025. Bill-filing for that session opens mid-November, so the San Antonio City Council plans to approve a formal lobbying plan before the end of the month.
On Wednesday, the full council got its first look at the city’s plans so far, focused broadly on promoting housing affordability, supporting access to child care, addressing food insecurity and health care needs, ensuring resilience against extreme weather events, safeguarding military installations and protecting residents from firearms and domestic violence.
While the state is again likely to have plenty of money available in its budget, past sessions have been more about playing defense than fighting for spending priorities.
Texas closed the last regular session after allocating only about half of a $33 billion surplus, due in part to a stalemate over Gov. Greg Abbott’s plans for school voucher program.
“It’d be far easier for us if they met every 140 years for two days instead of the opposite,” said Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who has has become a growing critic of Texas GOP leaders throughout his eight years as mayor.
Picking their battles
Indeed, past sessions have dealt San Antonio city leaders several pieces legislation that sent them into panic over their ability to conduct city business.
In 2023 top city staff members raced to Austin mid-session to defuse a bill aimed at curbing how much revenue municipally owned utilities share with local governments — viewed as a major threat in a city where CPS Energy’s payment-in-lieu-of-taxes accounts for a large share of the city budget.
While the bill’s author ultimately abandoned the proposal after visiting with city leaders, a different bill, aimed at preventing cities from regulating agriculture, business and commerce and natural resources, was signed into law despite the city’s protests.
San Antonio ultimately joined other cities in suing the state to stop it from going into effect.
“The environment at the Capitol has been challenging,” City Manager Erik Walsh sized up the situation on Wednesday. “Most of the work during the five months of the session is focused on preserving the council’s ability to set policy and enact ordinances.”
Like previous committee meetings on the matter, however, much of Wednesday’s council discussion revolved around how and when the city should engage on social issues.
Texas lawmakers have spent significant time in the past two sessions rolling back abortion rights, placing new restrictions on the LGBTQ+ community and regulating what can and can’t be taught in public schools.
While many of those issues are front-of-mind to council members and their constituents in a blue city, differences of opinion on avoiding GOP leaders’ ire have frequently put members of the council at odds with one another over the past year.
“If we actively go and make statements on behalf of these social justice issues, does it really affect our ability to lobby for SAWS and CPS Energy?” Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) asked the city’s Government Affairs team at a meeting of the council’s Intergovernmental Relations Committee last month.
“If I’m being honest, sure,” replied Assistant City Manager Jeff Coyle. “Positions we take that are in conflict with the state leadership potentially has consequences in other areas.”
By Wednesday, the lobbying agenda had been expanded to include opposing legislation that’s “discriminatory” and that undermines the city’s non-discrimination ordinance.
But several council members still criticized the document for not being more explicit in its promise to fight bills related to reproductive rights and the LGTBQ+ community, particularly in a city where trust for those state officials is incredibly low.
“We’re cowering from an opportunity to outwardly and openly support multiple communities that have been under attack in every single legislative session in recent history,” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said. “… It’s weak, and that’s not the message that I want to send to members of my community.”
Hired guns
Like the City Council, the elected officials San Antonio sends to Austin to serve in the state legislature are primarily Democrats, who have limited influence in a state where Republicans control every lever of power.
To maintain relationships with leaders at the capitol, the city leans on a stable of lobbyists with connections to Republicans — many of whom were in the room for last week’s council discussion.
For example, Ancira Strategic Partners includes several principals who cut their teeth working for former Texas Speaker Joe Straus (R-Alamo Heights), including Jesse Ancira and Joe Valenzuela. Carolyn Saegert has a background in tax policy and worked for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, while Colby Nichols is an attorney with an expertise in education policy.
Will McAdams of Texas Lobby Strategies was an Abbott appointee to the Texas Utilities Commission, and Carrie Simmons was a former executive director of the House Republican Caucus.
That help has become even more critical as the power structure has shifted right — but even the city’s ability to hire lobbyists requires defending each session.
After retirements and other political shakeups in the primary, at least 33 of the House’s 150 members will be newcomers, Government Affairs Director Sally Basurto told the council.
Many of those new faces are Republicans who ousted incumbents in the primary, and a movement is already underway to court their support for a new speaker who will further cut Democrats out of the policy-making process.
“We are anticipating and preparing for a new bench of Texas legislators,” Basurto said. “We anticipate that some of these members will land on key committees with jurisdiction over city bills, so it will be very important for us to engage in that outreach.”
Some pet projects
Among the places San Antonio intends to play offense on this year are pushing for the construction of a new east-west business corridor on the South Side of the city that would connect the area’s fast-growing residential and commercial developments.
Economic development has been a rare bright spot for collaboration with state leaders, even as the city has clashed with the state’s Department of Transportation on other road projects.
“The road infrastructure that far south, there’s literally no road. There’s not even a farm to market road that goes east-west,” Walsh said. “That puts additional pressure on existing corridors for large employers, like Toyota, JBC … and then you’ve got growing residential areas.”
The city also plans to come back with another proposal to increase penalties for owners of aggressive or dangerous dogs. A bill aimed at doing that in the last session was rejected by other Texas cities, and ultimately vetoed by Abbott, who said over-criminalization wasn’t the solution to San Antonio’s dog problems.
Additionally, members of council are interested in seeing the state regulate where vaping products can be used and sold, and CPS Energy hopes to influence legislation related to large power users, Walsh said.
Mixed feelings
On Wednesday, City Council members were looking ahead to the upcoming session with emotions ranging from eagerness to anxiety.
“I’m always down for a good fight,” said Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5), a progressive activist was a teacher and housing organizer before she joined the council. “I know it’s going to be long days.”
Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4), on the other hand, thanked the city’s government affairs team for sparing her from the cutthroat political scene playing out roughly 70 miles north.
“I actually hate going to Austin,” Rocha Garcia said. “I’m grateful to you all for the work that you do.”
They still have several weeks to finalize the lobbying agenda, and several members have vowed to keep pushing for a commitment to do more on social justice issues.
“Saying we’re here to maintain our own power is another way of saying, ‘We’re all in this for ourselves,'” McKee-Rodriguez said. “‘LGBTQ+ community, good luck. We’ll be there for you in secret, but aren’t willing to put your name in our program.'”
