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.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for On the Record, on Randy Beamer.

And this week, you may have seen the big headlines about a big merger in San Antonio.

UTSA and the UT Health Science Center are merging to become what is called UT San Antonio.

And that means more than you think it might in just a branding merger.

Here to tell us all about it is Doctor Jennifer Potter, who is the senior executive vice president, vice president of research and Innovation.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you so much.

Why is there such a merger and what will it mean for San Antonio?

Well, we appreciate that the coverage of this, it's a pretty big day.

And as you said, it's a big day not only for the university.

It's also a big day for our community.

We have a new saying called your Ambition Has a place, and it's here.

And that's what we think about when we think about our students, the expanded capacity that we're going to have to serve.

And I hope it's going to be a big place for ambition for San Antonio as well.

And it means a lot in terms of the economy with this combined, research institutions together and the endowment and the economic impact, things like that.

Correct.

I mean, the impact on our community could be in excess of $7 billion brought into the economy.

I think the importance of that is that's where we're starting.

This is about where we're going to go with this, and we are able to do more as a combined UT San Antonio than perhaps we were able to do separately.

Why is that?

You just get more attention, more focus.

Sure.

So I think that's part of it.

It's a pretty exciting day when I'm watching a football game on Saturday and seeing health care and the mission of UT San Antonio.

The big piece is that we are now the third largest public research university in Texas.

Imagine that.

And it's right here in San Antonio, Texas.

The opportunity to be one institution and combine the engineering prowess of UT San Antonio legacy with the Health Science Center means we can bring new innovations not only in the research we bring, but when we have something that perhaps we can contribute, to how, a patient experiences their care.

And we're able to commercialize that innovation right here in San Antonio.

That's an economic driver, just like health care.

And we used to think of it as just the university out on 1604.

And the medical school in the medical school campus.

But it's so much more than that now.

Number of campuses.

So much more than that.

We have, starting at 1604, that main campus.

You can literally look out a window on some of the floors at that main campus and see the Health Science Center.

And then we continue on to the extraordinary growth that we're seeing in downtown San Antonio, both at the original campus there, as well as in San Pedro one, and then obviously the southwest campus, which used to be the Southwest School of Arts and Crafts.

So great day.

And I want to back up just a little for those people who may be confused when universe when Bexar County Hospital System changed its name to University Health.

That was confusing for a lot of people because, the University UT Health Science Center was basically the medical school, staffed by doctors from University Health.

Is that still the case?

Yes it is.

So all of health care will continue.

The UT Health San Antonio, which is our hospital care network, will continue to be UT Health San Antonio.

And the individuals who come to our medical office buildings, whether that's on 1604 or in the medical center, will continue to get the great care.

University health is an extraordinary partner that we have had for a very long time.

Our physicians are there treating patients along with the extraordinary staff at University Health, and that will continue as well.

We're grateful for the partnership.

But you're not going to see signs up right away UT San Antonio or are you?

That's a great question.

If you're driving along some highways, right now, you will see UT San Antonio, which is our new identity, up.

And those ads and promotions are running.

What you will see is that we will continue to be UT Health San Antonio for our health care brand.

That's because we have the name recognition.

We want to make sure that our patients understand that they are able to come to the get the same great care that they always receive.

And rowdy and, UT San Antonio football.

Are we going to see UT San Antonio and helmets, things like that, or at least not right now.

UTSA will continue to be the much beloved identity of, the Roadrunners.

Rowdy is not going away.

I had the privilege of visiting rowdy, perhaps for one of the first times at UT Health San Antonio on our Health Science Center campus, might have had a little hug there and been able to to say hello to rowdy.

He's not going nowhere.

And now that they're merged.

What are some of the first things that you think you will see from outside?

Because of the not just the name change, but the image change and things like that.

You have a pretty good endowment, but are you going to get more people, you think, from across Texas?

I hope so again, I'm going to my I have the privilege to be in San Antonio leading the research enterprise, in a way that I never thought possible in my career.

I came from Emory and from Harvard Medical School.

This is the most extraordinary opportunity.

And I started with your ambition has a place, and it's here.

And I mean that I have extraordinary opportunities there.

So I'll give you an example.

In research, imagine us being able to recruit and embed scientists in the health Science Center to make and accelerate our research faster.

Imagine Alzheimer's that we are able to answer more questions more quickly because we have the depth and breadth there.

AI artificial intelligence has tremendous potential impacts for the health care mission.

We have a brand new college of artificial intelligence, cyber and Computing at UT San Antonio that can help us get those questions answered more quickly.

So we're starting now.

What about the integration, say, of a downtown campus and some of the cyber things down there, and some of the other research going on at the medical center?

Are we going to see in the medical center area and at the 1604 campus, is that going to how is it going to work?

We're going to start seeing signs that will take some time.

The most important thing is for people in San Antonio in the region to know that we are one university with one mission aligned across the two organizations, and that's a vision that will carry us well into the future.

Did you think this was going to happen, or did they think this was going to happen 20 years ago, 50 years ago, when the university opened, I guess at the 1604 campus, I remember people like Ricardo Romo coming in and saying, football is important.

And people went, wow, it really?

And it helped grow the image.

The name of the university, each president.

It seems like each decade has something new.

Where's it going to go next?

What I believe is that we are on the right track.

What we have now is the right time and the right place for this.

It allows to run universities.

So these are universities that are research intensive.

They're the very highest level of academic research prestige.

We are both large enough and on the right trajectory that our combination is going to allow us to accelerate research.

I'll give you, if I can give you an example.

So, several years ago at UT health, we made an investment, in Alzheimer's research, and we accelerated, exponentially our growth in Alzheimer's research and dementia on our campus.

Similarly, UT San Antonio UTSA had made investments there.

We have right now the opportunity to be a global powerhouse for the citizens and residents of Texas to be able to advance Alzheimer's treatment.

And that is that is exciting to see because I've covered research stories and how that works.

But as you said, collaboration is different than on the same, literally on the same team.

Yes.

And so what we are working on now is how are we going to make sure that everyone has a seat at the table to begin those conversations?

But that intentional collaboration, I do mean we want to make sure that we get all the scientists in the room.

Literally and figuratively, so that we can start to work on ideas.

And again, we're an ambitious group, and we want that not only for the science, but really it's about the impact we can make.

And when we look at this ten years from now, we want to deliver on the impact for our region.

Asking questions, answering questions and bringing better treatments, better innovations to our community that we love so much.

Well, thank you very much.

I know it's been fascinating to see all the over 40 some years here, to see all these changes and, look forward to the next 40 some years.

Doctor Jennifer Potter, UT San Antonio, right.

Senior executive vice senior executive Vice president of research and innovation.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks so much.

As of this week, some 830 plus new laws are taking effect here in Texas.

And it looks like the legislature is also going to wrap up its second special session.

Joining us now with everything to know about the new laws in the legislature, Scott Braddock, who is editor of the Quorum Report.

Thank you very much for.

Good to see you, Randy.

I was just say from from your lips to God's ears that they should be out of here for the rest of the year after this week.

You're telling them they should be out of here, but they yeah, they may be out.

Okay, well, well, there was a bit of a Covid outbreak at the Capitol, and somebody in the Capitol was joking that maybe that's God actually telling them, time to go.

Well, now what they did over the regular session, we want to first of all, look at what the governor's priorities were, and especially vouchers, that's taking effect.

And again, with 830 new laws, people might not understand what's going on.

But with vouchers, give us a little bit of background on that and how it will affect our kids.

One of the biggest fights at the Capitol for decades has been whether your tax dollars can be used to, give money to people to send their kids to private school.

And that dam finally broke.

You know, in the last, elections, you had the governor campaigning against members of his own party, and saying they weren't conservative enough, not strong enough on border security.

And he was really trying to beat them so they could get this, voucher thing passed, and they did.

And this is one of the issues on which the president of the United States personally got involved.

I was first to report a quorum report.com, that President Trump had called the, GOP caucus in the Texas House during one of their private meetings, and told them to fall in line with Governor Abbott on the school voucher proposal.

And there were still some Republican holdouts at that point, Randi, some of them who still wanted to argue about the details on this, there was some talk of maybe sending it to a vote of the people, put it on the ballot and ask that question since it's been such a big fight in Texas.

But after the president called, those Republican members, all the starch went out of that, and all of them fell in line, and almost all of them voted exactly the way the governor wanted them to.

The, you know, the policy implications here.

It's billions of your tax dollars that are going to flow to this program, something that in other states has not improved student outcomes.

I wouldn't expect that to be any different in Texas.

But this is something the governor says that he has a chance to make successful, here in this state, and he's going to give it a go.

But of course, it's on all of us to, you know, keep a close eye on it and see how it goes.

And public schools, they lobbied against it.

They are trying to figure out right now what it's doing to them, or what it will do to them, and how much they have to cut.

In many districts.

A lot of districts cutting and consolidating, you know, getting rid of certain, employees, including, not being able to give teachers pay raises.

One thing that's happening this year that made the school voucher proposal, possible to to become law, is the Texas is rich right now.

We have lots of money.

We have for two sessions in a row for the last four years, we have had record budget surpluses.

And so there was enough money to give a huge amount to public education for the next 24 months.

And then also do the school voucher program in conjunction with that.

But we don't know what the economy is going to look like in this state two years from now, four years from now.

And a lot of the legislators who are in office now get this.

I think there are only something like 11 to 15 legislators out of 181 who were even in the legislature the last time there was a budget cutting session that was back in 2011, when we had a really rough economy and billions had to be cut from the budget.

But we'll see what this really means for public education once we get into a cycle like that again and look, it was always Republicans who would say, you shouldn't spend all the money, because you know, that you're going to have, you know, tough times ahead at some point and you should have a good reserve.

But that's not what's happening in Austin right now.

And you mentioned that, President Trump intervened or called.

It's not the only issue that he became involved with in Texas and really changed the outcomes.

Absolutely.

The big one that, folks saw play out over the last couple of months was the redistricting fight here, which that's not a law that goes into effect today.

But those maps, it looks like they will be in effect, for the upcoming primaries coming up in March and then the, general election coming up, next November.

And what it does, Randy, is it it adds up to five Republican seats in Congress from Texas.

This is a national political fight that played out here at the Capitol in Austin, with the president demanding that he get more Republican voting strength from this state in the halls of Congress up in DC.

I'm not sure how that's going to play politically.

And even among some Republican voters, it just seems too nakedly political to be changing the rules of the game right in the middle of the game.

Now, THC is in the headlines and and people might be confused about it because there's a ban on vaping of THC products, but the whole THC pushed by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to ban, THC that didn't go anywhere, even in the special sessions where he was going to have that as a hill to die on.

Yeah.

Even now, as we're talking, it seems that that is not even on life support anymore.

That proposal is going nowhere.

And in fact, there was at least a proposal, to, to to make it the law that, only folks who are 21 and up can buy some of these products, but that didn't even go anywhere.

And it's because the lieutenant governor and the governor are in a stalemate about this.

Patrick wants a full ban on hemp derived THC, but he is in favor of marijuana derived THC being available through what they call the compassionate use program.

And in thinking about this, Randy, I've thought about, you know, try to do some introspection here about, you know, folks in our own profession, you know, on TV, radio, and we've written about it this way.

Work.

People have the impression, as you said, people might be confused.

People might think that this was a proposed ban on all THC.

It's not really that what Dan Patrick has been pushing here is government picking winners and losers in the THC industry.

There are those folks who are the players in the marijuana industry who like what he's doing.

Think of that.

The conservative lieutenant governor is with the marijuana folks on this because they're going to sell, THC at higher prices through the compassionate use program.

That's a medical to have, you know, a doctor's note, medical marijuana and all that.

And so you have a veteran maybe out in West Texas, who doesn't have access to health care, can't even visit a doctor who would like to just be able to go get product that might cost 10 to $15, rather than one that costs $500 through that program.

And that's why a lot of conservatives don't like this.

And, a couple of other, laws taking effect, foreign linked companies, and some people I know can no longer buy land in Texas.

Tell us about that.

Yeah.

Again, this is one of those things that's informed by the support from the MAGA base.

You know, anything that's anti-China or is that's one of the big themes that you hear all the time from President Trump?

And that was the main, target of a lot of the discussion at the Capitol.

This is one of those things that gets to be a tricky debate, because on the one hand, you do have what are some legitimate national security concerns.

But the way it gets talked about, ends up, you know, especially to those in minority communities, one of the, Asian legislators, from Houston, Jane Wu, who is the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, took it really personally, took it really hard, because he is a Chinese immigrant.

And there is a balance to be found between, you know, looking out for national security concerns, but then also making sure, you know, that those immigrants who are coming to our country for a better life, have the same opportunities that everybody else has.

A lot of that seems to get lost in this debate.

Well, thank you very much for your insight.

Scott Braddock, who is the editor of the Quorum Report.

Thank you for your insight as well as, what's going on in the Capitol.

And I hope you don't catch the Covid that's going around up there.

Well, well, I'll be in quarantine if I do.

I'll see you, Randy.

Thanks, Scott.

On reporters roundtable this week, looking into just how we are expected to pay for the Spurs arena, how much the Spurs are going to contribute and how much public money is going to go into it.

Dissecting everything there is to know about this is the, local government and politics reporter Andrea Rush of the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having.

Me.

You had a great story on just how this works and what pieces of public money are coming into this venue, taxes and whatever and where.

They can only go to things like this.

First of all, there, I guess three buckets.

You have the city's money, you have the county's money and the Spurs money to kind of break down those.

So we're talking about a $1.3 billion arena.

And of those three, you've got the county contributing about 311 million.

You've got the city contributing close to 500 million, and the team contributing another 500 million.

But it gets really complicated.

And throughout this process, we heard lots of members of the community talking about how they would like that, you know, roughly $800 million in public funding to be spent on other things like flood control.

So we start to pull the state code and really get to the bottom of exactly how this money could be used in it.

The venue tax is the one that I think people will have more familiarity with, because in 2008, it was used to fund a lot of different types of projects.

That's the county.

What we're going.

Even 311 for.

And that year goes up from 1.75 for hotel.

So it's about a 50 cent increase tax per night on hotel rooms.

And it's a continued tax on rental cars.

So, so largely taxes that, hit people visiting the city.

But it has been used to upgrade the Frost Bank center in the past.

Also like River that the mission reached the, like eco restoration.

But you need permission from the state to use it for a specific project.

And so the county had asked for permission to use it on East side venues Frost Bank center, Freeman Coliseum, as well as the Spurs Arena downtown and got permission.

And so that's what's going to be on the November ballot.

And that those 2008 projects are done.

They, they still owe a good bit of money on those projects.

They'll be paying them off until 2051.

But, I think that was probably one of the most confusing pieces to hear that that money couldn't be used any other way.

Yeah, because there are restraints on what the venue taxes anywhere in the state can go for.

But it could go to things critics say, like, what are you said, watershed improvements.

And so they say, well, why don't we put that to the flooding problems that we had recently?

Yeah.

And at this point, it's now authorized for the November 4th ballot, as is.

That would require permission from the state to do it differently.

And so downtown they expect to spend of this county, 311 we're going to vote on in November, most of the downtown, the Spurs arena, that whole complex, plus a lot on the East side, which also includes Willow Springs Golf Course and some of the development around there, not just the Freeman and the Prospect Center.

And so that is sort of county leaders response to this as, hey, the Spurs had approached us about using the venue tax and we ended up in a deal where we're going to be able to, you know, take care of these East Side facilities, probably spur some development that was supposed to come when the Frost Bank center was first created and reach a deal that will keep the Spurs in town and, and you know, the whereas the city is using some property tax reinvestments the county doesn't plan to be in on that so that the the downtown development would be more beneficial to the county budget than the city budget.

Okay.

Now it was a city money that 500 or 411 million, break that down.

That's kind of in its own two piles, too.

We've got some money coming from a state, sales tax in, reinvestment zone.

That's about a three mile zone around the a designated project that gets that's also approved by the state.

It was, pushed through in the last legislative session.

Other cities across Texas have used these to build or, arena type projects.

And it is a little more specific.

It's arenas and convention centers.

So San Antonio made its projects.

The convention center in the Alamodome originally said, if everybody else is getting this money, we need to get it to and then that was altered to include the arena as a potential use for that money.

But it's it's taking the increase in value from hotel from the state's portion of hotel sales tax revenue within this zone.

And that's so that's the state, okay, that that's the PFC that people hear about project finance.

Okay.

And then.

Yes.

Then we've got a reinvestment zone of state of local taxes.

That is the terms that, I think people are now becoming are again becoming familiar with terms because it's come up so many times in this discussion.

I saw some.

Tax increment reinvestment zone.

Yes.

So this is a smaller zone.

It's going to be the HemisFair area.

We have tours all over the city.

They're they're intended to help a blighted or a slum.

I think the definition within state code is slum area that you then you set a baseline of the taxable value there.

And anything new that goes in the tax, the property taxes from that are used for projects within that zone.

And there are people who study these all across the state and say that this is a little bit of a new use.

It's similar to how the missions baseball stadium is being funded.

In that case, the developer owned most of the land and said everything new I will be building.

So I it's developer dollars are, you know, property tax dollars that we're creating through this project that will be used on this project similar in this in the arena project, the Spurs have promised to put in not only 100, 500 million for the arena, but to also contribute another 1.4 billion in development within this zone.

So they would be responsible for that increase in value of property tax value within the zone that would then be used to repay the city's bonds for this project.

The criticism of that is that in both of these projects, there's going to be a ton of housing and mixed use development along there.

And if you've got all of your increased value of tax and property taxes tied up in Prepaying Stadium and arenas, they're not going into the general fund that would then pay for police and fire and services for everyone in that area.

The rest of the city winds up subsidizing those services for the city.

After all that easy stuff for the public money, the Spurs and their contribution, I'm sure we're going to be hearing a lot about that in the coming days.

As they push for this and other business interests there.

Again, it's basically that 500 million in addition to the $800 million.

And that's the easy part, I guess, to understand.

Yeah, it's that promise of additional development that helps pay the city's bonds for the arena so that, we didn't really get the details of this until the term sheet came out maybe a week ago, before the city council voted on it.

And this is money that then there won't need to be a public vote.

It's because it's in the terms and because it's in the PFC.

The board votes on it, and and the PFC is already set up by the state.

So, that is where the mayor has said she would like a public vote on the use of the city money before those bonds are issued for the project.

But so in addition to that, you've got get the 500 million for the stadium from the Spurs.

You've got the 1.4 billion development around it.

That's going to then be in the terms.

And then they're promising a $2.5 million a year in a community benefit agreement that the city can spend however it wants.

That would be over the course of 30 years.

So about 75 million.

And again, the opponents of the arena and building it say it's not coming from property taxes.

And I guess that's their bottom line of that 800 million.

It won't come out of my pocket as a.

Homeowner does our property taxes.

That is in there.

Yes.

That is the city's case to be made here.

They're saying we're doing this on primarily development developers, dollars and taxes on visitors.

It's not, you know, the average homeowner's property taxes going up to fund this.

The critics would say everything in within that zone still needs city services.

The rest of the city winds up subsidizing those services.

When you add a bunch of stuff, there.

So it's it's going to make my head hurt more.

And we're going to hear a lot of this information before November.

Well, thank you very much for breaking it down.

And it seems so simple in a way.

Andrea Rush, check out that story.

It's a great story in the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Local government and politics reporter.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can watch this show again.

You can watch any previous shows.

You can also download them as 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 Dufilho.