Listen
The Austin city council approved a plan last month to build new natural gas power generators. One thing that’s still unknown: The price of this new project. It’s estimated to cost more than $1 billion, but the vote approving the plan took place in executive session — behind closed doors. The KUT Newsroom wanted to know how many more of such votes have happened away from public view.
For kids, summer should be a magical time: catching fireflies, belly-flopping into the pool and maybe a little too much TV. But life can be tough for some kids. Luckily, there’s a place in the Hill Country that wants to help those kids experience some summertime magic, too.
This week in Texas music history, Lonnie Guerrero is born.
A few of today’s headlines:
- A new medical facility focused on women’s healthcare is set to open Monday in Central Austin.
- A Giraffe on the Lam in the Hill Country has been found safe this morning after a dayslong search effort.
- The National Weather Service is forecasting a high today of 97 degrees, but with that heat and high humidity it could feel as hot as 105.
Austin Signal is made possible by listeners like you. You can support our work by making a donation at supportthispodcast.org
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] The Austin City Council approved last month a plan to build new natural gas power generators. One thing that’s still unknown, the price of this new project, it’s estimated to cost more than a billion dollars, but the vote approving the plan took place in executive session behind closed doors. The KUT newsroom wanted to know how many such votes have happened away from public view. Their analysis, coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:31] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:36] And for kids, summer should be a magical time, catching fireflies, belly flopping into the pool, and maybe a little too much TV. But life can be tough, even for some kids. Luckily, there’s a place in the whole country that wants to help those kids experience some summertime magic too. We’ve got that story and a whole lot more. It’s up next, right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal. I’m your host, Jerry Guijano. Happy Friday, it is June 26th. Thank you for tuning in to listener-supported public radio. The Austin City Council approved in May a plan to build new natural gas power generators. We don’t yet know the exact price of that plan, but it’s estimated to be at more than a billion dollars. A remarkable number on its own, but what struck many as unusual is that the vote took place in executive session behind closed doors. City Council observers said they’d never seen something like this before. But when KUT’s Mo’s Bouchelle and Nathan Bernier asked the city about it, they heard that this was business as usual. Mo’s and Nathan are here now to tell us more. Thank you for being on the show.
Nathan Bernier [00:01:53] Thanks, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:01:54] So Mose, I’m going to start with you. When you heard that this power plant vote was done secretly in executive session, did that surprise you?
Mose Buchele [00:01:59] Absolutely, it surprised me and it surprised everyone I talked to about it. Typically, when council goes into these secret meetings, they might deliberate on some of these hot button issues to do with Austin Energy, but they come out and vote in public. This time, people didn’t even know what was happening. People were confused when they heard later on that this new power plant had been approved because the entire thing had been done secretly. So when you reached out to the city, what did they have to say? You know, my first question was… If this happens, has it happened before? People said they didn’t remember ever seeing anything like this happen before. So how do we find out how frequently these secret votes take place? City spokesperson said, well, we don’t track that, but you can go back through council minutes, painstakingly, you know, session by session to try to tease out how frequently executive session votes happen, secret votes happen. And so that’s what we did. Yeah, Nathan-
Jerry Quijano [00:02:53] That’s where I want to bring you in you went through some of this data. What is what stood out to you?
Nathan Bernier [00:02:57] What stood out to us was the lack of any mention of any vote taking in, having been taken in executive session. There’ve been more than a thousand council meetings since 1999 when this provision of the Open Meetings Act took effect that allowed under a very narrow exception for the council to vote in secret when dealing with Austin Energy competitive matters. And so we wrote a Python script with the help of AI to download all of these meeting minutes. And manually search them using search tools like Adobe Acrobat for a variety of terms. We also had our AI do the searching as well to double check us. But everything, we go with our own verified facts before anything that AI tells us. And all of these documents are publicly available online. It’s just very, very difficult to search them all without some kind of a script to programmatically download them. And essentially what we found was there was no evidence of this ever having taken place. Before, despite what Moe’s was told, that when these votes happen, that it’s recorded in the minutes.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:59] Okay, so now you had the findings, you went back to the city, what did they have to say?
Nathan Bernier [00:04:03] What they, it’s strange. At first, what we were told by Austin Energy was that here’s 16 examples again of when this happened. And it’s capital A-R-E. These are, these votes are indicated in the council minutes. And we, then we sent, okay, look, here are the links to the 16 meetings you’re talking about. Please tell us where there is an indication of a vote. Because we see none. One of the meetings has been, was a canceled meeting. And what then, what they came back with us the very next day was We don’t have to disclose that there was a vote because this section of the Texas Open Meetings Act allows us to have a vote without telling anyone.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:40] What does the law say exactly can happen in these sessions when it comes to power plants?
Mose Buchele [00:04:43] Right, so the carve-out in the Open Meetings law says essentially that anything to do with competitive matters can be discussed in secret. This is a law that started when the Texas electric market was deregulated in 1999, and the idea is that there are still some public power companies, Austin Energy is one of them. These are electric utilities that are run by city governments. And when they deregulate the electric market, they wanted those public power company to operate on a kind of an even playing field with private companies. Private companies can be more secret. So the argument was let the city councils take some of these competitive matters behind closed doors so that they don’t divulge any competitive secrets to anybody in the competitive market. Right. That that’s the idea. This carve out allows for votes to take place as well, which is really the thing that we were trying to hone in on here. It also says that the entity that basically can decide what’s competitive is city council itself. So you have to trust your council members to do the right thing when they start going behind these closed doors, start deliberating and taking votes in secret. There’s no way of looking into it and what we found in our analysis of the records is that there is zero indication when it happens. We don’t know, the public cannot know how many such secret votes have taken place since 1999. They cannot know what they were about and they cannot know how their elected officials voted on these matters. And this is what, there are a lot of different reasons that this is a big news story. But one of them, I think, is that you vote for city council members to make policy decisions. In these cases. What the city is telling you is that you cannot know how your elected official voted, how your election official decided. Here’s Joe Larson, he’s on the board of the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation.
Joe Larson [00:06:34] It’s an invisible government. It’s a black box. You don’t know what anybody’s doing. You don’t know who to hold accountable, much less for the public to have any input on an ongoing basis. It completely undermines the idea of the Open Meetings Act.
Nathan Bernier [00:06:49] And this carve-out, Jerry, in the Open Meetings Act, we went back and reviewed the transcripts of the Senate committee meetings when these changes were happening to state law, including in the Texas Open Meetnings Act. And there was a lot of discussion about why public utilities should be able to keep certain information secret, confidential, because it’s in the rate payer’s interest. There was no mention that we could find of why the vote itself needs to be kept secret. You can, and in the past… And most has reported on this extensively there have been numerous instances where the city council has taken big votes on on austin energy matters and they meet in private and they come out and vote in public in this case there’s been the little explanation little to no explanation of why we cannot know how is it how it is a competitive matter of how your council member voted even though there’s there’s no that there’s any law breaking going on here.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:46] You have reached out to every council member to ask about.
Mose Buchele [00:07:49] Their vote. What did you hear from them? So, yeah, we contacted the office of every council member and the mayor. Every single one of them, I should say everyone that was present for this vote, two weren’t there that day, every single of them got back to us with some version of, we can’t tell you how we voted. Some of them said we can do it because executive sessions are confidential. One council member, Zoe Caudry’s office said that they had been advised by City Legal that they could not disclose how they voted, how that council member voted. We talked to another staffer at a different council member’s office who said, Even staffers at the office, this is Mark Duchin’s office, even his policy director doesn’t know how he voted. The secrecy was that tight. But the fact of the matter is, they can say how they voted. There is nothing in the law that says that they cannot disclose their vote in this executive session. Here’s David Escamilla. He was the Travis County attorney for about 18 years. He advised elected officials on the Open Meetings Act. Here he is on whether they can disclose their vote. They do have
David Escamilla [00:08:53] some freedom to be able to discuss what happened.
Nathan Bernier [00:08:56] But he says, a lot of the times, elected officials may use the law as an excuse if they don’t want to talk about what was said.
David Escamilla [00:09:04] My experience is that in many cases, not all certainly, an elected official who might not have wanted to speak about those things would fall back on just a general recounting that my attorney says not to say anything.
Jerry Quijano [00:09:19] Okay, well, if the city is saying that this secret voting is business as usual, why is it a big deal?
Mose Buchele [00:09:26] So Austin Energy is a big power company, has an annual budget of $2 billion, and it is our public utility, okay? We as the voters, ostensibly, we own this company, we’re not just the customers, it’s our city public company. And the argument in favor of maintaining public ownership of these utilities, public control of utilities, is that they are accountable to the public, right? That there’s some element of democratic control over this. Clearly, the people that run Austin Energy and our city council members think that the secrecy is a way of protecting the utility, but it also clearly is. Disrupting the public trust in that utility. I mean, there are questions about the money involved, the millions of dollars that transfer to the city general fund every year, the way that this public money is spent by city council, all of these big questions to do with the use of public funds. But for me, it also just goes back down to that democratic question, the question of transparency. Maybe you have executive session deliberations, maybe there are should elected officials not share how they vote. On issues of grave public importance.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:42] Alright, we have been speaking with KUT’s Nathan Bernier and Mo’s Bouchelle. Gentlemen, thank you for your reporting.
Mose Buchele [00:10:47] Thank you.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:54] Okay, the World Cup drama is heating up this weekend as the final teams qualify ahead of the knockout stage of the tournament. Jimmy Moss from the Vamos Verde podcast is following all the action. Here he is with his latest update.
Jimmy Maas [00:11:07] A heavyweight matchup at the World Cup today, I’m Jimmy Moss. France and Norway are tied on points. A win means first in the group. This is a battle between two of the tournament’s top strikers, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland. Both with four goals, it’s a loaded France team against a Norway side looking to make a statement. Senegal play Iraq, neither has yet to win or tie a match so far, but somehow Senegal could sneak into a third place spot with a win and some help. Group H, very unsettled. Spain would take the top seed with a win or draw. Uruguay need a win to take the group, but even that might not be enough if Cape Verde, everyone’s newest favorite island nation, beats Saudi Arabia by a larger margin. Tonight, Belgium try to keep their World Cup alive against New Zealand, and Iran look to sneak past group leader Egypt. Last night, the U.S. Fell to Turkey 3-2 on a 98th minute goal in Los Angeles. The result barely mattered in the standings, but Austin Trusty and Sebastian Berhalter scored their first World Cup goals in a starting lineup with nine changes from their second game. Turkey got their first win of the cup. The United States will now play Bosnia Herzegovina in the first round of the playoff on Wednesday. Australia and Paduaig drew the result enough to see both sides advance to the knockout stage. Ecuador surprised Germany to elevate themselves into a third-place qualifier. Ivory Coast advances to the knockouts along with the group winning Germans. I’m Jimmy Moss.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:48] Get podcasts. We’ve got more Austin Signal coming your way right after this break. This is Austin Signal. Welcome back. Checking in on a few of today’s headlines, a new medical facility focused on women’s health care is set to open Monday in central Austin. Ascension Seton Women’s Hospital is on Ascention Seton’s main campus that’s on West 38th Street. It’s equipped to handle complex and high-risk pregnancies with 26 labor and delivery rooms. A giraffe on the lam in the Hill Country has been found safe this morning after a days-long search. Rial County Sheriff Nathan Johnson said the three-year-old giraffe named Gracie was found about four miles south of the ranch from which she escaped nearly two weeks ago. And the summer pattern of hot and humid weather continues today. The National Weather Service is forecasting a high of around 97 degrees, but with that humidity could feel as hot as 105. Though Austin may be called the live music capital of the world, its neighboring cities have made their own contributions to the city’s musical landscape. Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State tells us about one local musician and storyteller who became a Tejano trailblazer.
Jon Mellard [00:14:15] This week in Texas Music History, we meet a master of corrido in Central Texas. On June 21st, 1917, songwriter and guitarist Lonnie Guerrero was born in Maynard, Texas. As a young man, Guerrera made the move to Austin and began to travel throughout Central Texas as a self-taught musician. Guerrere was particularly interested in the corrido tradition of epic narratives and folk ballads composed of reaction to community events. A living Newspaper and song of sorts And these ballads were not only passed on as part of an anonymous folk tradition like the Corrido de Kansas on the classic 1800s cattle drives or Corrida of Gorgorio Cortes about the legendary turn-of-the-century fugitive. They continued to interpret current events a way of processing the flow of history in the moment. In this vein, one of Guerrero’s most poignant compositions was La Tarjadilla del Presidente Kennedy on the 1963 assassination of JFK in Dallas. A figure whose stature in Texas Mexican circles is symbolized by the Viva Kennedy campaigns that had mobilized Latino voters in the Southwest. Most of Guerrero’s working life involved day jobs with the Austin Independent School District, the Internal Revenue Service, and the East Austin Chicano Economic Development Corporation. All the while, he continued as a performing guitarist and songwriter, with his compositions recorded by the likes of Isidro Lopez, Little Joe, and Guerreros nephew pioneering singer and guitarist Manuel Cowboy Donley of East Austin. Donley recorded a range of Guerreros compositions, including Dos Corazones, Bateniebla, Sombras Until the Noche and many more. Further, music was a family tradition beyond Lani Guerrero and nephew Cowboy Donnelly, as Lani’s son and bandmate Louis Guerrera also composed the Latin standard La Cacahuata or Peanuts, made famous as a crossover hit by Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass. Tejano roots run deep in Austin as a family affair, and Lani and Louis Guerreiro were the first father and son to be inducted into the Austin Music Memorial in 2009 and 2010. You can hear music from the Lone Star State 24-7 on the Texas Music Experience at TMX.fm.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:39] For kids, summer should be a magical time, right? No school, no responsibilities, just catching fireflies, trips to the pool, and maybe a little too much TV. But life isn’t always easy or simple, even for kids. Sometimes loss happens. They lose a grandparent, maybe even a parent or a friend. And though nothing feels normal, summer comes around anyway. Well, there’s a place in the whole country that wants to help those kids experience some summertime magic, too. It’s called Camp Braveheart. KUT’s Olivia Aldrich spent a morning there.
Mose Buchele [00:17:14] Y’all start grabbing gear
Olivia Aldridge [00:17:16] On a Friday in mid-June, middle school aged kids are lined up for their shot at a summer camp rite of passage. The infamous high ropes course at John Knox Ranch in Fisher, Texas, the host of Camp Braveheart. 13-Year-old Alyssa bravely steps up to the challenge first. Soon enough, she’s strapped into a harness, inching along ropes hung 30 feet in the air.
David Escamilla [00:17:38] Hey, take a second, you want to look at the view? Oh, Jesus Christ!
Olivia Aldridge [00:17:43] True to Camp Braveheart’s name, the camp’s leaders say plucking up the courage to do something scary can be a really important experience for these kids. They have to learn how to trust themselves. That’s Esmeralda Huerta. She’s a program manager for Hospice Austin, the nonprofit that sponsors the free summer camp.
Esmeralda Huerta [00:18:00] Life throws things at you, but you got to learn how to trust yourself that you can do it and you can hard things and this is one of those things that we start teaching them.
Olivia Aldridge [00:18:08] Down on the ground, Alyssa’s friend Deshauna is watching her navigate the ropes. She’s ready for her turn.
Deshauna [00:18:14] I’m really interested in it because it’s something new, I’ve never done it before.
Olivia Aldridge [00:18:20] I’m down to try. Just coming to Camp Braveheart was already a leap of faith for 13-year-old Deshauna.
Deshauna [00:18:26] To be completely honest, I was really scared to come because I didn’t know if I was going to be the older kids or younger kids. And like I’m fine with being the younger kids, but older kids…
Olivia Aldridge [00:18:34] Kids are kind of scary.” Campers range from rising second graders to rising tenth graders, but kids mostly get to spend time with their peers. Dashauna started bonding with a group of kids around her age at a big pool party the first night when campers from each cabin put together silly synchronized swimming routines. Now, less than three days later, they’re fast friends.
Deshauna [00:18:54] So, Alyssa, I call her Love Bug, and she’s the one that’s going up the high ropes right now. And Country Boy is the one with the red hair spotting, and then Lady Bug is the
Olivia Aldridge [00:19:06] pink shirt.” Camp friendships form quickly and Huerta says it’s an important foundation for some of the conversations the kids will have during the week about people they’ve lost.
Esmeralda Huerta [00:19:15] Some of them are parents, siblings, maybe a really close friend or relative, grandparents, from let’s say a sudden death or a long-term illness or death by suicide. It can be of anything that they’re coming in with.
Deshauna [00:19:34] Here because she lost her grandmother. She was one of my favorite people and one of the most amazing people that you would ever meet, mainly because she understood everything. She was sweet, she was caring, she very loving, and her favorite color was red.
Olivia Aldridge [00:19:49] Dashauna says she hasn’t talked about her grandma too much while she’s been here, mainly with her brother, who’s also at camp, and Miss Carly, one of her favorite counselors. The opportunity to talk and open up is there. Kids meet in small groups with other campers who have experienced similar losses each morning, and staff are trained to help them learn healthy ways of navigating grief. But Huerta says talking about it isn’t always what kids need.
Esmeralda Huerta [00:20:15] From time to time I can get calls that say my kid needs to really come talk to somebody and the parent is actually projecting how they’re feeling.
Olivia Aldridge [00:20:23] Their kid actually wants a break from that pressure.
Esmeralda Huerta [00:20:25] They’re like, I’m really doing okay. I just really want the grownups to like let me navigate this and let me figure out my school and my friends. Like things are already so hard and being pushed and pushed to try and share or not or they’re not crying or this. Everybody grieves differently and at their own time.
Olivia Aldridge [00:20:44] So all of this typical camp stuff, high ropes, swimming at Blue Hole, archery, arts and crafts, that’s therapeutic. Kids work on two art projects throughout their days at camp. One is a picture frame that they can put a photo of their loved one in. The other is a small wooden memory box, decorated with paint pens, glitter, any creative way they want to honor their loved ones. Inside the arts and craft’s cabin, boxes rest on a table while paint dries. One box has an American flag and a football painted on it. Another has baby brother written on the side and silver letters. Dashaunas is decorated with red gems in honor of her grandmother’s favorite color. Tonight, all the campers will bring their boxes to a final.
Esmeralda Huerta [00:21:29] Memorial service. We give each group a question to ask their groups and so one of them is you know what are you going to put in your memory boxes when you get home right kind of building these rituals and coping mechanisms and skills for them as they grow up to be able to continue this loss and how to carry it.
Olivia Aldridge [00:21:48] When Dashauna leaves Camp Braveheart, she’ll take a few things with her. The memory box, sure. Some lessons, too.
Deshauna [00:21:55] I learned that it’s okay to be sad in that you’re not alone in this process.
Olivia Aldridge [00:22:00] But also she’s taking the phone numbers of her new friends. They plan to start a group chat and send invites to each other’s birthday parties. I’m Olivia Aldridge in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:12] And that is it for today’s show and for this week of shows. Thank you for tuning in and you can catch up on the show. All the stories we shared with you in today’s show and in this week’s show, in the podcast, show notes and at kut.org slash signal. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. Our team today is Casey Cheek. He’s our technical director. Alexandra Hart is our producer and Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer. Have a great weekend. We will talk to you on Monday.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
