Legislation aimed at city-owned utilities like CPS Energy has San Antonio officials worried stiff. Here’s why.
CPS Energy's coal-fired power plants J.K. Spruce and Deely on Calaveras Lake Thursday January 4, 2018. Low temperatures in San Antonio have cranked up demand for heat and electricity.from providing revenue to the cities that own them.. If the bill became law, they say, it would gut the city’s credit rating and force steep cuts in services, possibly including police and fire protections, libraries and recreation.
in San Antonio and parts of seven neighboring counties. It also supplies natural gas to nearly 374,000 customers.The city of San Antonio acquired the utility in 1942. Since then, it has transferred up to 14 percent of its revenue to the city every year.A lot. CPS Energy is expected to hand over nearly $392 million to the city during this fiscal year. That’s 26 percent of the city's $1.
Gorzell said that if the bill becomes law, the city will have to cut services significantly and might have to raise taxes to make up for the lost revenue. Assistant City Manager Jeff Coyle called the legislation"the biggest, potentially most damaging piece of legislation we've ever seen."State Sen. Charles Schwertner for one. He’s a Georgetown Republican, and he’s chairman of the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce. He wrote SB 1110.
He says he’s not out to block the transfers altogether. In the fine print, the bill would prohibit municipally owned utilities from building revenue transfers into the rates they charge customers.“That’s the genesis of this bill [to prevent] an inappropriate transfer that overly burdens utility ratepayers, by enterprising city councils that want to utilize the utility as, basically, a piggy bank to fund whatever they want,” he said.
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