This article has been updated.
Councilman Mario Bravo (D1) has been suspended from his committee assignments until further notice, after a conflict with Councilwoman Ana Sandoval (D7) over how to spend the city’s surplus CPS Energy revenue turned sharply personal.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg issued a memo Friday announcing the decision, which he called “a preliminary step until an investigation on the events in question is completed.”
For weeks Bravo had been rallying colleagues around his plan to spend some of the money on climate mitigation solutions, such as home weatherization and planting trees, as well as setting a portion of it aside for Sandoval’s proposed fund to pursue federal grants.
Bravo’s idea was derailed at last week’s City Council meeting, when Sandoval instead helped pave the way for a plan that funded her own proposal but gave the rest back to CPS Energy customers in a rebate. City Council went on to approve the budget, with Bravo voting against it and Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3) abstaining.
But before the meeting began, according to the San Antonio Express-News, Bravo angrily confronted Sandoval, with whom he had previously had a romantic relationship, saying her lack of support for his plan illustrated why their relationship didn’t work and why he didn’t want to have children with her. Sandoval, who recently gave birth to a baby girl, reportedly was brought to tears by his outburst.
Sandoval’s office said Friday she declined to comment on the incident, preferring to focus on the $10 million the budget included for addressing climate change.
Bravo issued an apology to colleagues on his personal Twitter account Thursday night, saying he had failed to treat Sandoval with respect. “I regret it and wholeheartedly apologize to Councilwoman Sandoval, the rest of my council colleagues, and all of the residents of District 1,” Bravo said.
Nirenberg’s action Friday would remove Bravo from his positions on four City Council committees: Community Health, Environment and Culture; Municipal Utilities; Planning and Community Development; and Transportation and Mobility. Sandoval serves on three of those committees.
Leading up to the budget vote, Bravo and other progressives on the council rallied behind an amendment proposed by Viagran that would have delayed discussion of the CPS Energy revenue until a later date. Their effort had the support of environmental groups such as Environment Texas, Climate Justice San Antonio and the Sierra Club, which wanted the money to go toward climate mitigation projects they believe would help keep energy bills lower in the future.
Liberal activists showed up to the meeting to lobby Sandoval, who is normally an ally of the environmental groups, in favor of that plan. She ultimately abstained from voting on the amendment, which failed on the tie vote, 5-5. That cleared the way for the rebate plan favored by Nirenberg, which most of the council had expressed skepticism about throughout the budget process.
Despite issuing the apology, Bravo, a first-term council member, maintained Sandoval, who is serving her third term on the council, had committed to help his plan and “broke her promise at the last hour.”
“While I struggle to understand why she compromised her principles in last week’s vote, I remain committed to working professionally with all of my council colleagues to advance policies that benefit our city,” Bravo said in a prepared statement Friday.
After the amendment failed at last week’s council meeting, Bravo began questioning Sandoval’s plan from the dias, suggesting that it would ultimately cost the city money because funds pulled from another project to pay for it would have to be replaced through debt.
“Councilwoman Sandoval is trying to do the right thing with this. But she also says this is the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” Bravo said at the meeting. “When I came up with a big bold proposal that was visionary, this was something that they pushed back against.”
City Attorney Andy Segovia reminded Bravo that his complaints could be directed at staff and policy, but not other members of the council, in accordance with City Council policy.
After the budget’s passage, Nirenberg praised Sandoval’s contribution, which uses $10 million of the CPS Energy revenue to create a climate action fund that will also a portion of the revenue in the coming years.
“What the Council adopted today is in my view, historic, which is that we created a sustaining revolving fund for climate action moving forward,” Nirenberg said.
