On the Record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.

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

That's why each week we go On the Record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

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

Join us now as we go On the Record with Randy Beamer.

And thank you for joining us for On the Record, I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are starting with a possible merger, at least a partnership that could wind up giving businesses in San Antonio, at least the business community.

A bigger voice here to talk about that is Kevin Dinnin, who is the board chairman of the Greater Chamber of San Antonio.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Very glad to be here.

Tell us about this partnership that could lead to a merger you're looking at right now and why?

Why now?

We have a window of opportunity, I think.

I think a lot of the business community was surprised when our president and CEO, Jeff Webster, indicated he would retire December 1st.

I applaud Jeff's service to San Antonio.

He's done a lot for our community in various capacities, he said.

It was time not to put the kind of hours in that you have to do when you're president and CEO of the chamber.

So when he came forward, it kind of presented an opportunity.

Coincidentally, I was having breakfast with the president and CEO and board chair of the Metro Chamber.

They rebranded a couple of years ago as Metro SA chamber to give a broader reach to their potential members here in the community.

We were having breakfast and we just started talking about, you know, we can do more together than we can apart.

There is some common agreement regarding what the Greater San Antonio Chamber should be doing for the business community and for everybody who lives in San Antonio, as well as the Metro San Antonio Chamber.

We're in strong agreement that the role of the chamber is important for everyone who calls San Antonio metro area home.

We help reinforce the economy that benefits everyone.

Well, now, if you could maybe outline the differences as you saw them and see them between the two chambers, what they do, what their different roles are, people might not even understand what a chamber does.

For 132 years, the greater chamber has sought to advocate and bring together people of like mind with regard to improving economic conditions and bringing resources infrastructure into play.

As we look at the history of the greater chamber, the greater chamber had a role in even what is now known as the Fiesta Commission.

We can fast forward decades.

They had a significant role in bringing together leaders to what is now the South Texas Medical Center.

There have been very significant elements of San Antonio that exist today that probably would not have existed had it not been for the business community, leading and leaning forward and bringing people together for common purpose.

Greater San Antonio Chamber many might think that it is a larger organization, more members.

It is has about 1500 plus members.

Metro SA has done a great job in recent years and growing their membership there.

Now at about 1000 members greater SA, some might think that they have some of the larger employers in town.

They do, but Metro SA does as well.

They have some of the larger employers, but they have done a really good job with medium and small business coming into their midst.

We think I think in particular, that will make for a stronger chamber if we're able to either form a partnership or in fact merge that the greater chamber and the metro chamber combined, in my judgment, needs to be a chamber for all of San Antonio, southeast, West and North, all sized businesses, two person business to one of our larger employers.

We are the business community and that is the best insurance policy for this community.

People might also wonder about okay, it's a networking group.

Is it a lobbying group?

Largely.

Is it a group that services small businesses and helps them develop?

I'm sure it's a little bit of all of that, but what is what do you see it mostly as or again, the difference between the two groups in the past.

It is certainly a networking group.

There is an opportunity for chamber members to frequently get together either in a committee, a council, a mixer setting, and meet one another.

I cannot tell you how many times I've attended a chamber function and met someone.

And of course, life is about relationships.

And you meet someone that has a product or a business or a service that, oh, I'm glad to meet you because I need that service.

Probably more impactful for the community as a whole is the advocacy.

The greater chamber's voice is, and the Metro Chambers voice combined could be extremely loud.

And when I say loud, I mean in a very effective way.

It is a large segment of the business community advocating for jobs, job training, new opportunities for people you know.

San Antonio, Will Rogers said, was on the three not for three greatest cities in the United States.

And San Antonio is a wonderful place, and I feel a stewardship responsibility, particularly at this point in my life.

Well, what about the difference between, say, advocating and economic development?

Those are different groups.

We have really to help bring businesses here.

Greater SAT, big fan of greater SAT and what they've done.

We're fortunate in San Antonio that they and others, before greater SAT worked to bring new jobs to San Antonio.

We need more of that.

We have generational poverty across this city, that we can break those cycles with the right jobs and the right job training.

I'm fully, fully believe that pulling together we have great opportunity.

Greater SAT need.

They had the lead role in the movie, if you will.

The chamber should be the best supporting actor to come right in behind them and support them in any way possible.

As we're bringing in new jobs and industry center.

How do you decide on what to advocate with 1501 Group, 1000 and the other?

There's going to be differences of opinion.

Do you send out surveys?

Do you canvass the different people about what to advocate for, say, in Project Marvel?

We do that through various means.

Both chambers have committees and councils that are representative of their members.

Some of the councils are fairly large and they convene regularly.

Issues come before them.

Councils invite speakers from the mayor to members of the council to other community leaders, presidents of our utility services.

Those things come before councils and then they debate, evaluate and generally take a position on on things that are being debated in this city.

That position works its way up to the board, and the board will decide if that is a public position we want to go forward with.

So the chamber fills the need, a greater chamber, and I'm sure metro the same to weigh in on important issues.

I said it before, but I want to hit it again hard.

The best insurance policy that San Antonio has for the economic health of every man, woman and child in this community are the chambers of commerce.

Elected officials are going to come and go.

You and I both have seen many come and go in our time in San Antonio.

Yes.

And the thing that remains the same is the business community and its members.

And they simply must be a insurance policy for maintaining the economic health.

Why didn't it happen three years ago when there was first talk of a merger?

Good question that times were different then personalities were different.

Current environment is different.

There seems to be.

You know, it's on the phone on the way here this morning and someone was saying, I've not heard one word of opposition to a relationship between Metro and Greater Same.

Since this has been announced, I've not heard one word because I do think our society as a whole is kind of tired of divisiveness that on occasion, we recognize linking arms together for common purpose, frankly, feels good.

And I think we have recognized under the current leadership we can do more together then we can apart.

All right.

Well, it's going to be interesting over the next few weeks and months how this plays out come back when when things are set.

Kevin Dinnin, it was the right now board chairman of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thank you so very much.

Thanks.

With the election coming up, we here at On the Record.

Would like to get you to know the candidates for the top statewide offices in Texas, from lieutenant governor up to Senate.

And right now we are talking with Democratic candidate for governor, Gina Hinojosa.

State rep from the Austin area has been in the House since 2017 from the Rio Grande Valley.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, thank you.

Before we get to specific priorities, why you and why now?

Well, I have spent my entire career really focused on public schools, making sure that we do what we can for our kids in public schools.

I first ran for office because they were trying to shut down my son's school.

I ran for the school board.

That fight for public schools took me to the Texas house.

I used to be able to work in a bipartisan way for public schools.

That changed last year when Greg Abbott forced through vouchers he had gone after Republicans in the primary the year before, the Republicans who voted with us to defeat vouchers.

And then the space where I worked in was no longer a viable space for for progress and doing good things for kids.

And we fight for our public schools because they're important to our kids and families, but they're also essential to the American dream, the American dream.

That was the promise that I understand we could hold this country and for sure Texas to.

I understood this as a little girl, and I will tell you that the American dream is out of reach for too many working people.

And so I decided to run for governor to secure the American dream.

And that starts with saving Texas schools.

Our schools are in crisis in a big way.

I'm happy to get into that, and also by doing what we can to put money in the pocket of hardworking Texans.

And so that is my agenda and it is resonating across the state.

Public education as your number one priority.

Would you do away with school vouchers?

I would do everything I could to put that money back into public schools.

What we saw in this dispersal of these vouchers is that the category that we had most people apply for and received for was pre-K.

That tells me there is a real strong desire amongst Texas families to find affordable, accessible pre-K spots.

We need to open up the opportunity for public schools, for instance, to get that back into their schools so that they can provide those pre-K spots.

It's too hard for many of them to do that right now.

And so so that would be one way to take that money that we've put into privatization, into private schools that are unaccountable and put that money back into public schools.

But that will always be my priority.

And another priority you have is affordability.

And you have an interesting proposal of giving people back money, literally $1,500 to each Texas household that would come out of the state's rainy day fund, $17 billion of the rainy day fund.

Tell us about that.

Right.

Right now we have $27 billion in the rainy day fund, and I can't find an economist who believes that is a responsible thing to do to sit on $27 billion.

That money should be out in the economy, working in the economy, especially in an economy where so many working Texans are struggling.

We have the most people disconnected from their electricity because they cannot afford to pay their bills of any state with the most uninsured people, the most uninsured children we have, the most bankruptcies of any statements are small businesses that are really struggling to keep their doors open.

And I will say, you know, back to this promise of the American dream.

People don't believe that government can make their lives easier right now.

We have to rebuild trust in government.

This government is the service that people pay for.

We need to be showing that we can do something.

And so giving this money to every Texas household a refund, and I call it the Greg Abbott corruption tax refund, because so much of the policy driven out of the capital just comes from doing the bidding of moneyed interests, people who are connected to Greg Abbott.

Those seem to be the only bills were allowed to vote on in the Texas House.

And so at a time when people are struggling, I am running across people more and more who are having to donate plasma as a second job.

School teachers standing in line before the doors at the plasma center open to give blood 2 to 3 times a week to be able to pay their bills.

It shouldn't be so hard to provide for our families in a state that is a world economic powerhouse, and that is what I'm running to change.

Another big flashpoint right now across the country data centers.

Our city council in the San Antonio has been talking about those.

What would you propose on data centers?

The governor has been talking recently about data centers.

The last year, he wanted to be the epicenter of AI in in the country.

We need more then talk from the governor on data centers.

Right now.

There has been this really avalanche of data centers into Texas.

They all were drawn here by the very generous tax breaks that Greg Abbott signed into law.

And people are not protected under status quo right now.

So I traveled to the Panhandle, for instance, where people are living in these rural, unincorporated areas and these hyperscale data centers have set up shop.

They don't even have paid firefighters or paid EMS in these communities.

They don't have streetlights in these communities.

So there's this total mismatch of resources and infrastructure between these hyperscale data centers and these rural communities.

And they're being taken advantage of here.

And that's why people are so mad.

There are very real concerns about these data centers.

There's concerns about water use, electricity use break.

Abbott needs to call us into a special session.

I have called on him to do so so we can pass laws to protect people.

Right now he talks about making things different.

He's going back on his original declaration that Texas would be the epicenter for data centers in epicenter in the world, but talking doesn't protect us.

We need to pass real laws to protect Texans as soon as possible, because we have hundreds here already.

And before any more damage is done, the governor has the sole power to put a stop to this property taxes.

Both of you have ideas about property tax relief.

How is your plan different than the governors?

Well, for when the governor is not trusted on public schools, we need to make sure that we are fully funding our public schools and at the same time providing property tax relief.

To give you a sense of our public school record under Greg Abbott, we have now over 150 school districts operating at four days a week because they can't afford to operate at five days a week.

That's the level of crisis that our public schools are in.

In Texas, my career has been dedicated to preserving, protecting, defending our public schools and our kids.

And so what I would do is cut property taxes for residential for homeowners by doing away with so many corporate tax giveaways that the state has built its economic policy off of, rather than investing in corporations and thinking that money is going to trickle down to the people of Texas.

Let's invest in actual Texans and in schools, in homeownership, which is core to the American dream, has has always been.

He wants to.

So that's how our plan would be different.

And he wants to abolish local school district taxes and say that all the money for schools would come from the state.

I take it you would not do that?

He has not provided a plan that makes sense to anybody.

So just to be blunt, he has declared it, but I would.

I support reducing property taxes as much as we can if we can eliminate them.

Great.

I think the place we find savings is doing away with those corporate tax giveaways.

You want to expand health care access?

How would you do that?

My plan is to ensure every Texas child has quality health care.

We do that by expanding Medicaid or one of the few states that has not done that.

And we've paid into a system.

Gavin Newsom is taking our tax dollars, using it to insure Californians.

We need to take that money back and make sure we're insuring Texans.

And let's start with our children.

And also, I will say, for those of us with health insurance, we pay more.

Yet it's harder to see the doctors we need to get the medication we need.

I'm coming across cancer patients who have been paying into health insurance for years and can't get coverage for their chemo treatments.

That needs to stop.

We need to ban bad faith denials.

That is a popular position when I will champion as governor, you also want to stabilize utility rates.

How we need to freeze electricity rates in Texas.

We have the most people disconnected from their electricity of any state.

That's an emergency means to freeze rates and make sure that these corporations are paying their fair share.

That industry is paying its fair share because right now we as residential tax rate payers are subsidizing industry.

Data centers are a big part of that, right.

We anticipate that because of all these data centers that are here, our electricity rates will go up about $600 a year.

That's unacceptable.

So I would freeze the rates for our residential ratepayers and make and make sure that we reform the system so that these industries are paying their fair share.

One of your advertisements is about flock cameras that a lot of people are critical of.

Now that read license plates, the state is using those to help.

It says in border and immigration enforcement.

What would you do with flock cameras right now?

What we're seeing in Texas and across this country is there are very few rules and regulation when it comes to these flock cameras.

Using flock cameras along the border for border security is a very different thing than setting them up in our communities, so that they are capturing all sorts of information so that they are surveilling Americans.

That is not something that Texans support, and it is not something that we have given the governor permission to do.

He's gone about this himself, funding these slot cameras in this state.

He has not been given the authority by the legislature to do this.

And so when I'm governor, that stops in San Antonio.

A lot of criticism over the years about the expanding state control over local entities, local community school districts, the city of San Antonio, their ordinances.

How would you deal with that?

I think that our local governments are most responsive to the needs of community.

They are elected into office, and I think we need to respect at the state level those relationships, the closeness of that relationship and the results of elections in our local communities.

There is so much that the state government is required to do so much that is currently not doing or failing at.

We need to focus on doing our job at the state level and work in partnership with our local governments who are being responsive to their local communities.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Gina Hinojosa Democratic candidate for governor.

And again, want to mention that we have reached out to all the top candidates from lieutenant governor and governor and senator in Texas, and we hope to have all of them on here on On the Record.

Thanks.

On reporters roundtable this week, more about data centers, their importance to political campaigns and to all of us.

Man here with us now has written a whole lot about data centers for Inside Climate News.

Dylan Baddour is a reporter for that group.

This is one of those things that a lot of people don't understand.

Still, data centers and how big they are in Texas.

Just this week, there's a report of another one in our area.

Yeah, in South Korea, said they were going to invest $22 billion in Encino between here and Laredo for a 6.6GW gas fired power plant to run artificial intelligence.

So huge volumes of electricity that we're talking about here.

And what does that mean to the rest of us?

And you wrote a lot about the pollution.

Yes, indeed.

What we're talking about is the scale of the power generation here.

So many people might not know.

One gigawatt is a big power plant that's like the largest scale.

And very quickly over the last year or two, we've moved from 1 to 2 to 4 to 6 to now seven and eight gigawatts of power generation.

So when we have a power plant that size six times what would be required to power a city, that's a lot of air pollution and they don't have to ask permission with the law the way it is right now in Texas, although they have paused future connections to the grid.

Is that what's happening?

Texas has paused data center connections to the grid because there's not enough power to go around.

I mean, the scale of the pipeline of requests to connect to the grid is enormous.

They said in a hearing last month that the pipeline to connect to the Texas grid is more power generation than the entire country currently uses.

So it's not all going to happen, and it can't all happen.

But what we're seeing is the biggest and most well-funded of those players building their own power plants that would not be connected to the grid, like the one in Encinal.

And the other one that you've written about extensively is an Amazon power plant out in West Texas.

Yeah, that one is, I believe, 7.5GW, which would be the largest power plant in the country by a long shot and the largest single source of pollution, air pollution in the country.

The regulator here, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, awarded that plant the largest air pollution permit ever granted in the country, and that was back in January.

Amazon has said that it will own and operate this facility.

That was a recent announcement.

And, you know, the power is and the whole facility is built speculatively.

In a way.

They build the power, they build the infrastructure, and then they invite companies to come in and run their servers there.

Is that what would happen, we assume, with the South Korean plant near Encinal?

We don't know much about that yet.

Right?

We don't know much about that.

But the investment $22 billion.

I mean, that's a heck of a lot more than a power plant.

And this was reported as done through trade negotiations with the Trump administration.

But it definitely shows that Texas is willing to be a hot spot for artificial intelligence.

We have the gas in the ground here.

That's a big reasoning behind the location of these plants.

And deals like this with South Korea show that we are bringing, you know, the world's AI infrastructure to be built here in Texas.

And the governor has urged these companies to build their own power plants off the grid.

And you mentioned the gas is in the ground.

Say what happens in Encinal or Amazon.

There's gas in that area that they can tap into.

Not positive with Encinal, but I would say yes in West Texas.

Absolutely, definitely.

And you know that gas requires a huge amount of infrastructure to get to customers in the rest of the state to get to the coast where it's processed and refined.

So if you put a power plant right on top of the gas fields, that's a pretty good deal.

And in fact, you're burning a lot of gas that would otherwise just be released at the wellhead for lack of infrastructure.

You talk about pollution and tsk approving this.

What kind of standards are they looking at?

And are these exceptions that they're granting to some data centers.

So the standards, all the standards being applied are pretty typical of of how things are done here in Texas.

The exceptions being granted right now are for smaller and dirtier power generating hardware because of supply chain backlogs for the big stuff, power plants combined cycle turbines.

So they are installing oftentimes hundreds of engine generators.

Each of these is about the size of a train car or a tractor trailer.

And they line them up over acres two, three, 400 of these things to generate the equivalent power of a big power plant, but with a lot more pollution.

And I understand that if you split up the plant from the data center, you can or they can build more a bigger plant without having the problem of being labeled as a major polluter.

Is that right?

That's a pretty classic trick of permit applications here in Texas that if you have, you know, 100 units, instead of getting a permit for 100, you get five permits for 20 of them.

And it looks like you're running five smaller facilities.

We've written about that for years.

All kinds of of operators do that.

The focus here now is all of the largest gas projects in Texas are for data centers.

So that's why we talk about data centers so much these days as opposed to other things.

What do you think will happen?

You know, Jim wanted a special session.

It's not going to happen.

Governor Abbott, surprising to some people, has paused at least part of this.

Is that going to last?

Well, the pause, I have to say was almost not even by choice by Abbott.

There's not enough power on the grid to go around, so there's just no way these things would connect.

That was even probably a decision that came out of bureaucrats in the in the Utility Commission in the future.

I mean, I don't see any further restrictions being built on being put on building out gas power.

Water availability has become a big concern, but these companies are following the rules that all other companies follow, which pretty much say that you have a right to buy water where it's for sale.

And the county, the city can't turn that down.

Well, and I know you'll be writing about this a lot more.

We'll be following it in the future.

Dylan Baddour, thank you very much for coming in.

Reporter for Inside Climate News.

Thanks.

Thank you, Randy, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again.

You can watch any previous shows.

You can also download it as a podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the Record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Duflilho.