Santonio-Citizen watchdog group InfuseSA posted a detailed Facebook update featuring correspondence among San Antonio officials, charging District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur with breaking the Texas Open Meetings Act. The group claims she gathered with five fellow council members to reach agreement away from any public session. The supposed breach took place ahead of the June 18 council gathering. At that meeting, Kaur joined a majority in putting off debate on San Antonio Water System’s (SAWS) proposed 33 percent rate increase. InfuseSA based its claims on emails and texts between Kaur and others that it obtained. Kaur offered no response to the materials released by InfuseSA. “
I am staying focused on District 1 resident requests and concerns during this tough budget season,” she messaged the Current. Two previous City Council members, Adriana Rocha Garcia and Greg Brockhouse, appear to share InfuseSA’s view of Kaur’s conduct. Brockhouse nevertheless told the Current he expects little chance of legal consequences for her.“This is what [City Council members] do routinely,” said Brockhouse, who has twice sought the mayor’s office on a populist ticket. “And they find new and creative ways to do it.”After examining the InfuseSA documents, University of Texas San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor voiced concern.“If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck …” Taylor said to the Current.
“When you have people who are not part of the process, like Rocha Garcia, saying it was a walking quorum, then that suggests to me that it was. But, proving it and prosecuting it are two totally different things.”Emails secured by InfuseSA through an open-records request and posted by the group show that, before the June 18 rate discussion, Kaur conferred with five colleagues about worries over the SAWS proposal. She compiled those concerns and forwarded them to senior SAWS leaders.“We are sharing a letter drafted by several colleagues that outlines challenges we have collectively experienced, along with specific requests we ask to be addressed prior to any approval of any rate increase,” Kaur stated in a June 17 message to SAWS CEO Robert Puente and board member Jelynne LeBlanc Jamison. “
We look forward to partnering with you to move a rate increase forward once these requests have been met.”She copied five council colleagues: District 2’s Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, District 4’s Ric Galvan, District 6’s Edward Mungia, District 7’s Marina Alderete Gavito, and District 10’s Marc Whyte.In another message, Kaur set up a lunch meeting with Puente at the Pearl-area spot Down on Grayson on June 17 to go over the points in the letter.Texas law bars government bodies from taking votes out of public sight or holding private talks that could shape public decisions. When officials engage in meaningful discussion outside a properly posted meeting, it can constitute an illegal “walking quorum.”The central issue here is whether the council members named in the email grounded their positions on the SAWS rate proposal in the set of requests Kaur transmitted to the utility.Even though Galvan received the email and an invitation to the lunch with Puente, he ultimately supported letting SAWS proceed with the rate increase.District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears, who was not among those copied on Kaur’s message, joined the side that postponed rate-hike discussion until October.SAWS is pursuing the hike—potentially adding about $200 a year for typical residential customers—to fund long-overdue fixes to its aging pipes and infrastructure.
Disclaimer: This news story and accompanying images are for informational and illustrative purposes only. Some visuals may be AI-generated or digitally enhanced and may not depict actual events or persons.Views expressed are based on publicly available information and analysis