Speaker 1: On the record is presented by launch essay, San Antonio, small business owners.

San Antonio is a fast growing fast moving community with something new happening every day.

And that's why each week we go on the record with the Newsmakers are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters round table to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now, as we go Speaker 2: Welcome to on the record.

I'm TJ mate, governor Abbott announced a new statewide policy this week that will open all businesses at full capacity.

And in the mask mandates, there are many unanswered questions about how his order applies to different industries navigating through the uncertainty of a pandemic.

Ray Lopez represents Western bear County and the state legislature.

He joins us.

Thanks for being here.

Speaker 1: My pleasure.

Thank you, TJ for inviting me.

So what is Speaker 2: Your view of governor Abbott's mass policy?

Speaker 1: Well, I think ultimately everybody wants to implement a no mask, no restrictions back to normal, uh, environment.

Uh, I get it.

I think all of us want to want to be able to do that, but I think we have to be a little bit more cautious about how we're going out and implementing it.

Uh, I don't think we're ready for no mask, uh, mandated at the state level.

And I say that with the recognizing that there are probably areas in the state of Texas that could do that, right.

The population, the density, the, the epidemic, uh, you know, turnover and, and count, uh, is probably to the point to where we could do that.

But I think whenever the governor makes a, a sweeping declaration like that, it allows areas like San Antonio to be put into a difficult situation and being able to do what's right, as opposed to do what's mandated.

I believe it's a little bit, uh, uh, uh, um, ahead of its time.

So Speaker 2: Mariner and burglary they're nightly briefings.

And after he announced it, they were a little upset about the fact that it restricted the ability of local governments to do what they needed to do, or they felt that they needed to do there's this local versus state control issue.

You've been on the city council.

You're now in the state legislature, just a few brief thoughts you have about that ongoing battle, which is continuing on.

Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I don't know that I have just a few thoughts on that.

I have a lot of thoughts, but I'll share a couple of them with you.

And one of them, it just seems like, uh, out of convenience, we will often say, and generically say the word we have, the folks in Austin will say local control is important, local control.

And the folks on the, on the front lines ought to be making the decisions except, and there you have exceptions.

And I really do believe that the best place to be making a lot of these decisions is going to be at the local level.

And there just seems to be this push at the state level to remove all of that.

And it's not only in this air instance, it's in a handful of other, uh, policy directives, uh, that, that the communities are a hand.

So what I'm Speaker 2: Hearing you say is like, with the mass mandate, what's best for ADIs Cosa County may not be best for bear County.

So why do at once it's a one size fits all approach, right?

Speaker 1: Exactly.

I mean, and that's that, that's the key to it.

Speaker 2: So vaccinations, um, I got my vaccine, you told me you've gotten your vaccine.

Okay.

You've got both, there's some disinformation about vaccines and public health professionals are really worried that people aren't going to get the vaccines and that's going to constrain our ability to control the spread.

What do you think about vaccination and what the state's doing in terms of getting the vaccines out to people?

Speaker 1: Well, I think that the number of the volume of the vaccines is where the problem is, right.

We just don't have a supply chain that is able to keep up with, with the, uh, with the distribution, uh, demand.

Uh, so that, that's part of the biggest problem.

Uh, the other one is kind of communicating what is the problem process that we're going to use to get you your vaccines if you want them?

Uh, you know, we've, we've kind of struggled with that a little bit.

I think we're going to get beyond that very, very shortly.

And I think it's really important that the state take the ownership of being able to provide a statewide, uh, message and then have a level of communications throughout the, throughout the communities, and try to give a single message, try to make sure that there's plenty of vaccines available and that the process by which people apply for them becomes standard.

Right now.

We've got a kind of a hodgepodge approach.

I understand why, uh, but we need to fix that.

And I think we're going to do that in very short order.

And I'm talking within the next few days.

Speaker 2: So you're a veteran, you're a leader on veterans issues at the Capitol.

Um, as most of our viewers know my dad was at Bamsee for a hundred days in the ICU and the great team at university hospital just did a transplant on him this last weekend.

We're very grateful, but you've introduced some legislation that'll help.

Bam.

See, can you just describe that legislation really quick, given how important military medicine is to our economy?

Speaker 1: Absolutely.

Uh, the military is incredibly important to our community, to this economy without a doubt, right?

Everybody recognizes that, but there's also some gaps.

One of the things that people, many people don't recognize or realize is advance, you does serve non-military individuals as well.

What we're trying to do is try to get bam sheet to have coverage for those services that they provide to the community.

Oftentimes, uh, uh, you know, they're left holding the bag because the person that came to get the service got the service when they needed it, or aren't able to get paid for it.

And that creates a problem for the service delivery of Bamsi.

So we're trying to fix that by increasing the amount of reimbursement for BMC, Speaker 2: Uh, representative, right.

Lopez.

We really appreciate you taking your time.

I know you're in session and very busy and our viewers appreciate your time.

Speaker 1: I appreciate you as well.

Thank you so much for your interest.

Speaker 2: the center city is beginning to revitalize again, representing the center city is counseled and Roberto Trevino from district one.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

So a lot going on at city hall, the first big question on everybody's mind is the response to the electric grid failure.

Um, what do you think about how CPS and saws and the city did in that response?

Well, I, I think I speak for a lot of people and, uh, we're, we're all very disappointed.

Uh, there was a real feel, it felt like lack of communication and coordination, especially when you have downtown all lit up and neighborhoods all around in the dark without power and in the cold.

Uh, it's, it just, wasn't a good look.

And, uh, we, we could do better.

Uh, most importantly, I, as, as a representative of city council and the city, uh, I believe that we could also have responded better.

You know, we can't always plan for, or predict an emergency, but we can plan for an emergency.

And, uh, our emergency operations center was not opened up.

We delayed the opening of a warming center for, for the fourth day.

Uh, there's just a lot that the people want answers on.

And we, we intend to explore that.

So our community is used to floods.

Our community's used to heat waves, and we're not really used to beat freezes in your mind as climate change becomes more apparent and these weather events are going to become more frequent.

Do you think we need to look at our emergency response plan and account for these big changes that are happening?

We absolutely do.

But another way to look at it is how are we treating those who are most vulnerable to inclement weather?

You know, who that is, it's our homeless.

And so the fact that we don't have tools right now, or assets in place to help those who are most vulnerable means that we're not going to have them for us as a city when we all need it.

So I think this is a time for us to combine those two efforts and say, you know, we can invest in ways to help our most vulnerable today in, in ways that we can turn that outwardly to the rest of the city when we need it.

I was at Corazon ministries at Travis park, and I know that the city under your leadership has been really involved in the homeless outreach in the clinics on the weekend.

There's a mobile shower there that you had a, a few things to do with.

Um, what do you think we need to do better about homeless outreach and inclement weather, but also just generally in day-to-day life, We need to allow homeless outreach to lead, not to be an afterthought or also not to be giving them some kind of a deadline, the homeless outreach, strategic plan that we paid a lot of money for and adopted in December clearly States that we're the policy currently is only to allow 48 hours of outreach before there's an accountant cleanup.

That's not enough time.

And certainly we, we can do better because that is putting all the pressure on the outreach to do, to fix everything in two days, it doesn't work that way.

I think we can, we can allow our outreach specialists to, to lead in a way that they could determine what is needed in encampments and other areas to really meet the need that our homeless have, but where they are.

So Alamo has been at the top of your agenda for a long time.

I know there've been some changes in the Alamo management structure.

Can you give us your perspective on what's going on with the Alamo and what the future of the project is?

Well, uh, it's, it's, uh, obviously it's disappointing that, uh, that Ron, uh, removed me from the Alamo management committee.

Uh, the first big question is why right now everything we just talked about, you know, there's, there's all these pressing issues, really issues, uh, that we're all facing.

We need to be questioning what's going on, uh, CPS and, and our city's response, and to be doing this right now, th th the timing is suspect and, and, uh, really just leaves us with more questions than answers.

Um, quite frankly, uh, you know, the, the Lieutenant governor has wanted me off of this project.

He asked the mayor to do it, and he did it.

It's a simple, I thought you had the Lieutenant governor with all drinking buddies.

It surprises me that he wants, We, we might've been, but we probably would have ended up in a big fight after a few drinks, because we don't agree.

He wants to tell, continue to tell a mythological tale of the Alamo.

And, uh, we've, we know we've gone past that.

Most importantly, we have a great project, uh, and a great responsibility as a city to, to not lose our leverage.

And what I mean by that is that this partnership is about the city and the state working together to, to tell a complete story at the Alamo.

Uh, what, what has happened lately is that we, as a city have let, uh, costs get out of control.

We've spent millions of dollars on things that they will never be utilized on the project, uh, because we allowed the, the, the Texas stork commission to extend or delay the vote on the Senate staff.

But now the Senate tax is not moving.

We spent a bunch of money under the assumption that it was going to move almost $6 million, and that $6 million is gone.

It's gone, it's gone, and we shouldn't have spent it.

And I, you know, so these are the issues that I've brought up.

And my concern is that I've held folks accountable and at the heart of this is, is that, that I'm being removed, uh, to, to not, to not be a part of that, so that we can continue to ask, why are we doing this?

The next big problem that I see is that there's a proposal by our city management, uh, that asks us to spend millions of dollars on state controlled property.

So for what, why would we do that was never part of the deal.

And I, again, let's go back to the emergency.

Let's go back to how much this community needs the city to be there for them.

Why would we spend millions of dollars on state controlled property?

Well, Councilman Trevino, thank you as always for joining us.

Thank you.

Our nude focus on equity in our community, seven bear County school districts.

The South of town have been under invested in for years.

Someone's doing something about it, Dr. Henrietta Munoz.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you, TJ.

So tell me about the aspire network and the work you're doing on the South side.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Um, first of all, thank you so much for having me here.

And the spiral network is something that everybody should know about in bear County, um, and throughout the actual region.

So a and M San Antonio, which is a young university here in San Antonio, located in South bear County, decided, uh, to work very closely with the community in its vicinity and its region, its area.

And so we have a dynamite, uh, president Dr. Cynthia Mattson, and what she ended up doing is working with seven of the South bear County school districts.

So these are traditional public school districts.

You all know them, your, your, your viewers know them, Edgewood ISD, Harlandale, um, East central ISD, Somerset, South side, Southwest, South sand.

All of these ISD came together, sat down with Dr. Mattson and a few others to really think about how, um, their advocacy as a whole could come together and create opportunities for South bear County.

As you just said, 40 years, 50 years of disinvestment in South bear County, they needed this collaborative tool.

Speaker 2: So a lot of our viewers, when they read about these school districts and the news, they read about board governance issues, they read about tea.

So those seven school districts together have a pretty large student population.

Is there a comparable district in bear County in terms of population?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So all of them together make about 70,000 students.

So if you think about other school districts in bear County, I think South San Antonio ISD is about 90,000 students.

I know that Northeast is about 140,000 students, so there are larger school districts, but as a whole, we're still talking about 70,000 students who live in South Bay.

Speaker 2: And they're there.

The fact that they're small creates disadvantages for them in procurement and teacher recruitment, and as aspire, trying to do something about that, Speaker 1: That's absolutely right.

What we intend to do.

And we, what we're doing about it now is ensuring that resources are coming to South bear County, not just to one school district, as you mentioned, maybe a smaller one in size, but as a whole.

And that's what the aspire network, um, inspires to, is this equitable approach to bringing resources to this community.

Speaker 2: So charter schools there's been this either or proposition the last 20 years when we talk about charter schools, I know there are strong camps on both side, but you are in the newspaper, your program this Sunday talking about in district charter schools.

Can you explain that concept?

Yeah.

Speaker 1: And district charter schools, uh, personally, I would say is the way to go.

Um, but in district charter schools are an opportunity for traditional public school districts to think about how to reinvent their own education system within their, their public school system and a charter school.

And in-district charter school charter schools allow for an opportunity for families and students and parents to make a choice of where they want their child to go to their student, to go to, to school.

There could be a specialization for those schools.

There could be an opportunity for an Academy that perhaps is a dual language Academy.

So the schools that are oftentimes in district charters are specialized school.

Our schools of focused.

Speaker 2: How many are there that you're working on right now?

Speaker 1: So right now we have three.

And the one that was in the paper this past Sunday is Winston elementary.

Today it's Winston elementary.

Uh, this next fall we'll be operating in partnership with Edgewood ISD.

And this will be Winston intermediate.

We have two additional schools.

Gus Garcia university school was, which is a traditional middle school.

Um, it has six, seventh and eighth graders.

The population there is about 700 students.

Then we also have Burleson school for innovation and education.

All three are in Edgewood ISU in Edgewood ISD.

I could Speaker 2: Go to those schools.

I could choose to go to the schools.

What if I lived on the North side?

Speaker 1: Yes, yes, absolutely.

These are open enrollment schools.

And so you do have to become a student in Edgewood ISD, but magnet schools, are they, how are they doing?

Yeah, they're they're, they're um, they are kind of like magnet schools.

Again, Gus Garcia university school specializes in civic engagement, Winston intermediate next year.

We'll really specialize in steam science, technology, engineering, and math.

So they are somewhat like a magnet school there, again, real specialized and focus schools.

You still get your traditional core curriculum.

So you have exposure to all the things that you need as a student, but you also get that added layer that sometimes you see in regular charters, um, external charters, like idea and Kip, for instance.

So it's an opportunity for public school districts to bring that specialization, to bring that expertise in the school district and then offer it to their families.

Thanks for joining us.

Absolutely.

Thank you for having me Speaker 2: And now for the reporters round table, joining us is Mike Taylor business called and the San Antonio express news.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, TJ, you wrote a column recently about a topic.

I still don't understand Bitcoin.

What is Bitcoin?

The point is in many things, financial, you're not supposed to understand.

It actually is a digital currency.

It's new.

Uh, and it's based on a technology that is new called blockchain.

And in the last few years, it's increased adoption and people think it will be a useful form of currency and exchange.

So blockchain technology enables Bitcoin as a currency.

So can you describe briefly reader's digest version?

What is blockchain technology?

Not a technologist?

My understanding is a good analogy is as if we had Excel like the spreadsheet, but between any computers in the world and between any users who don't even know each other, or don't have to verify who they are, could build something into this commonly used database.

That's a simplified version.

As I understand it, of the blockchain.

And people say that that could be very useful in lots of it has a lot of application.

So it provides a trustworthy conduit for people who may not know each other and trust each other.

And that facilitates transactions or relationships that may not otherwise be available, Possibly it's not in wide use right now.

Bitcoin is probably the biggest adopted youth, but people think it will have uses in the future.

Okay.

So blockchain, blockchain technology enables Bitcoin.

There've been these bubbles with Bitcoin in terms of its financial valuation.

If I want to buy Bitcoin, how do we even do that?

I mean, it's actually quite simple.

People are generally going through Bitcoin, we'll call them custody holders in the way that you would buy stocks.

And that's become increasingly easy as an IPO for a company called Coinbase, just built around doing that happening right now.

There's a cash.

There's an app that I use on my phone called cash app.

It's as simple as, you know, like a Venmo PayPal type thing, and you can buy a Bitcoin that way.

I've personally never bought Bitcoin and I don't advocate it, but it is increasingly easy to acquire a Bitcoin, not much harder than buying a stock.

So if I'm buying Bitcoin, you're saying it's like buying a stock.

If I go buy a treasury bond, right.

It's just a security of some kind that I can trade on later.

Is that correct?

Security?

It's it's like a currency it's like buying the euros or pieces, except for that.

It's not backed by any government.

Does any G so no government recognizes Bitcoin, is that correct?

As far as I know, no government has said that this is a legitimate way of say paying your taxes or doing hard to the point of Bitcoin.

As I understand it to many technologists who love it is that it is not backed by a government.

It is stateless.

It is not regulated in the way the currencies are.

It's not controlled by central banks.

So the value of Bitcoin is just a function of free market economics completely.

Is that correct?

I consider it has very little value, but it is whatever people find it to be valuable.

That's the value, but it doesn't intrinsically have value beyond a belief in value.

If it's not backed by government, We're concerned that Bitcoin could be used for illegal transactions like drugs or guns or other things, because it's not regulated and followed the way that the U S dollar is.

In my opinion, the only use case for Bitcoin is illegal activities, because you're trying to do something outside of the purview of governance, which is tax evasion or currency avoidance or drugs or assassination.

I see no, you know, any legal business I believe is better done in dollars, but that's my personal belief.

So is the government, the IRS, the us government, some other foreign government, are they trying to get a handle on the Bitcoin market?

And what's actually going on here because it doesn't really seem like they are, but we're not following it closely.

Do you have a sense of that?

I am certain that the IRS has said, if you buy a Bitcoin at 10,000 and it goes to 50,000, like anything that you buy and then sell, you would owe capital gains on that.

So the IRS I'm certain is extremely concerned with tracking and having people report any gains.

That would be the number one thing then, because it is associated with illegal activity.

I'm sure law enforcement like FBI is quite interested in being able to track who's buying and who's selling Bitcoin.

There's a lot of computer hacking and that the FBI would be quite concerned with regulating.

He had a famous line.

He said that you lose the benefits of law enforcement when you operate outside the law.

Is there a concern about fraud in these Bitcoin transactions and are there protections at all?

So one of the jokes that people who follow Bitcoin closely is that the main purpose of it seems to be, to be lost or stolen through hacking that is over time, been improved upon as organizations have figured out how to make this more secure.

But on the other hand, yeah, there's something inherent about people are trying to avoid the purview of government.

Well, then you don't have the protection of government.

The way that a bank, which holds dollars is quite regulated and quite protected in the 17th, 18th, 19th century.

We worried about whether money and banks was safe.

We no longer worry about that.

I think people should be extremely concerned, whether Bitcoin is safe, there's a huge tradition of Bitcoins being lost or stolen or hacked.

Mike Taylor, you always explain complex financial subjects.

Very simply.

We appreciate that.

Thank you for joining us.

That's my mission.

Thanks for having me Next on the reporters round table, Gilbert Garcia, Metro columnist, San Antonio express news.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

So you wrote a recent column about the mayor's debate or forum mayor Nurnberg is not participating, but the other candidates are, what were your observations from that forum?

Speaker 1: Well, this was a debate if featuring five of the 14 candidates, it was at the restoring church.

Uh, I should preface this by saying the pastor of the church was one of the people who believed very strongly that the November election was stolen from Donald Trump.

And he actually said that there are demonic forces at work.

So I think a lot of the crowd kind of felt that way, too.

Uh, you had, uh, some candidates like Gary Allen who ran for Joaquin Castro's congressional seat last year as a Republican.

Uh, he was saying kind of semi jokingly.

I think he's blaming Ron Nuremberg for, uh, the power outages that we had recently and said, uh, that, uh, we should build a nuclear plant next to his, uh, his house.

Uh, they had, because Ron Nuremberg wasn't there, they had a chair with a big poster of Bernie Sanders, the famous Bernie Sanders shot of the inauguration with mittens and above it, it had a speech bubble saying where's Ron.

So there was a lot of that kind of stuff going on.

Carnival atmosphere, Greg broadcasts.

I think in that environment, I think tried to kind of be the statesman kinda take the middle ground, he'd say on homelessness, we should have compassion.

We should be responsible about COVID-19, but, uh, we just don't need the city to impose restrictions.

He was kind of trying to kind of, um, you know, be the, because there was some extreme, uh, rhetoric happening there.

He tried to be kind of the, take more of a middle ground.

Speaker 2: So that was a big issue in the marriage rates are forming into a big issue, was the business closures.

It seems like governor Abbott kind of took that issue away from the mayor's race with his recent executive order.

Now we have an executive order from governor Abbott, which says businesses will be opening and that mask mandate is being revoked.

What has been the reaction from political class here in San Antonio?

Speaker 1: You know, I think people have been, have been upset and feeling that it's premature.

Uh, we've got, I think about 6.8% of the people in Texas who have gotten both doses of the, either the maternal or Pfizer vaccines.

So, um, we still got a long ways to go.

I think there was a feeling that maybe if we just waited a little bit, that you know, that this was maybe a premature, you know, spiking of the football, um, he, I think Greg Abbott has had pressure from his Republican base saying, you know, the he's gotten a lot of criticism there.

I think that's where he's, he's most sensitive to criticism from that, from, uh, that part of the political class.

And, uh, I think that he, uh, the, the, the, the, the challenge, I think that what upsets people is the feeling that by having the state mandates it, it took the pressure off of businesses.

If, if a local store say at HEB once says, you know, we, you have to wear a mask.

They had the, they had the force of the state behind them.

Now it's up to businesses to try to impose their own rules.

And people can say, I don't, I don't wanna.

Speaker 2: So watching the mayor and judges briefing Tuesday night, they were talking about this.

They had Andy Segovia there and Larry Robertson there.

And I think there's some concern about how the devil's in the details on these kinds of things.

And there's some ambiguities there.

So I guess we're gonna have to watch how that unfolds in this uncertain environment.

You produce a really cool podcast called Peurto politics, hosted by the San Antonio express news.

And you recently did an episode about San Antonio water system and their public relations contract with the County commissioner.

Can you talk a little bit about that and what the controversy is there?

Speaker 1: Krista Berry, who was, uh, elected last November, uh, to a commissioner's court, uh, has a long history as a public relations firm, very successful public relations firm has, has had many public contracts over the years.

She had a contract with San Antonio water system, and it was coming up, uh, I think for renewal in October now, she looked like she was the likely winner was very Republican precinct that she was running in, but she had not yet won.

So she decided to renew the contract for one more year.

Uh, it's a $175,000 one year.

Yeah.

And so the, uh, there was some criticism about that.

The express news actually had endorsed her and then rescinded that endorsement because they felt that there was some conflict of interest issues with her and her firm.

Um, but she said, this is not a County issue.

You know, this is the County doesn't really have any interns Speaker 2: And there are appropriate firewalls in place that it would ensure improper conduct for her.

I don't think anybody's really thinking that she's doing anything a proper, it's more of an optics issue, is that the problem?

Speaker 1: And I think that because both saws and CPS energy, now they're facing some scrutiny over what happened with the blackouts and, and, uh, you know, the, the water outages recently that, you know, she's going to be the liaison for the, for the County, uh, to, as the city investigators.

That was just maybe some feeling that she might be in an awkward position when it comes to, you know, criticizing salts.

If it's, if she, Speaker 2: Your most recent column was about a falling out between mere Nurnberg and Councilman Trevino over the cenotaph, which is the issue that just doesn't go away, right?

Can you set the size that briefly before we close out Speaker 1: Texas historical commission voted last September, that the Senator is not going to move.

And, uh, Roberto Trevino felt very strongly that his vision for the Alamo Plaza, redevelopment or restoration was it had to move 500 feet, uh, mayor Nurnberg agreed, but he doesn't want to see the whole project go down the drain.

You have a Garcia, you always have insightful views.

We always look forward to the truth bombs you drop in the express news when thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

And thank you for being here for another edition of on the record.

We are still here as always.

You can go to Kayla ren.org to view this episode or previous episodes and podcasts or video format.

We will see you next week..