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.
Joining us now as we go on the Record with Randy Beamer.
Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for this week's edition of On the Record.
I'm Randy Beamer.
Over the last few weeks, you've heard a lot in the news here recently about the shootings of police officers.
About a half dozen police officers shot in a different situations by different suspects, some of them repeat offenders.
Police chief has been very critical of the district attorney.
Last week here on On the Record, we had the San Antonio Police Officer Association President Danny Diaz, very critical of the district attorney, Joe Gonzales, in fact, asking for his resignation, as he put it, if he didn't do his job.
Well, joining us today to talk about that, to respond to some of the criticism is the district attorney, Joe Gonzales.
Thank you very much for coming in.
As we were talking just before we came on the air here.
You said that there were some misconceptions.
You think, both from the public and from what Danny Diaz had to say last week.
Tell me about that.
Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me.
I'm happy to be here and help dispel some of those misconceptions and talk about the great work that our office is doing.
Talk about how bail bonds work.
But but certainly that's one of the biggest misconceptions, is, is that the perception that when violent criminals or criminals in general are are released after they've been arrested, it's because of the DA's office or specifically because of of me.
I've heard the term tossed around.
It's because of of Jose LAX bail bond policy that somebody was released.
Well, I don't have a bail bond policy with regard to felonies and especially violent offenses.
What I've done is direct our prosecutors to use their best judgment when reviewing a case and recommending a bond.
But even in situations where we recommend a high bond because this person, this individual has a criminal history that is violent, ultimately it's up to the magistrate judge.
We can only recommend bonds to judges or the ones that set bonds.
Is there.
First of all, tell us about the standard bond amount for different categories of charges.
Sure.
And that's a good question, because I look at myself recently, I've been kind of keeping track.
And for example, the last 50 times that we have made bond recommendations that I've been made aware of.
And this means that somebody calls me at two or three in the morning and says, We have a murder in the main office.
Where do where do you think we should recommend the bond for murders?
We record regularly and recommend Bonds 150,000 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
And we recommend between 75000 to 100000 for aggravated robbery, the same 75 to 100000.
So whenever there is anything involving a gun, we will recommend a pretty significant compared to administrations days in the past.
How does that rank?
I think I think certainly you saw high bond recommendations under under Susan Reid and I think even under Nicole Hood.
But again, it's up to the mentor judge.
I know, for example, in my in my situation, I was a part time mentor judge for seven years under under the Susan Reid administration.
So I remember setting bonds.
What that I thought were appropriate because a master judge has to has to set bonds that are reasonable then, but they cannot be oppressive.
The law says that everyone except someone who's facing a charge of capital murder is entitled to a bond.
That's the law.
That's the Constitution.
So magistrate judges have to it's a tough job.
They have they have to determine where the appropriate amount is, and that is to ensure the presence of that individual in court.
But here's the problem, Randi.
We have a cash based system in our state.
That means that somebody, for example, that that's charged with murder and we recommend a bond of 150,000.
Let's say the judge sets at 150,000.
If he has 15,000 in his bank, he can receive 10% is a going rate.
He can hire a bondsman and he can walk out the door with the 15,000.
A lot of bond companies will take less than 10%.
We've heard as low as 3%.
We've heard some bond companies.
If you're willing to put up your house, they'll bond you out.
Can you take into account how much that person may have for a bond that if it's going to be easy, that easy for them, that it should be higher?
Is that something you can take into account?
Well, not only that, there's case law that says adventurous judge.
Judges have to take that into account.
They have to look to see what the the ability for a prisoner to make a bond, because, again, it cannot be oppressive.
It cannot be so, so high that that person has no chance of getting out unless it's a capital murder case.
Would you now consider raising some of those bond recommendations?
And I understand part of the part of the issue, at least from your point of view, is that you want more police input or you have asked for more police input when they recommend that or when they think it should be higher as they're not.
Been the communications between you and police officers, detectives and your prosecutors and the magic before it gets to that or as it gets to the magistrate, there is that there is not that classic communication that I think needs to exist recently.
I know that when I was a young prosecutor back in the day, 25, 30 years ago, we we routinely had officers, especially detectives, come to the bank office and and sit and talk to us about why they think the recommendation ought to be higher.
Again, even if we recommended high, that doesn't mean the judge is going to set it that high.
But at least we know and those are the boots on the ground, right?
Those are the officers that are that are dealing with these violent offenders.
And so they're better equipped to be able to tell us when the bond should be recommended higher.
One of the criticisms you've faced in the past couple of weeks is when you have said that it's it's not we can't prosecute cases unless we have the evidence and we we have a reasonable ability to prove that.
Now, some of the people in that town hall meeting the other night there was sometimes confrontational, stood up and said, well, why don't you just go ahead and take it to trial and let the jury decide that you shouldn't be rejecting cases when when officers bring them to you and arrest somebody that you should do what you can, take it to court.
Because we have obligations as attorneys.
We take an ethical oath to do justice, not to prosecute, but to seek justice.
And so it would not be justice to go forward on a case that we know we cannot prove, for example.
And they, again, use a family violence situation.
We know that there there are there's an increase in domestic violence, assault cases that are filed.
And if the victim tells the officer, I'm sorry, I'm not going to show up, don't even bother to to look for me because I'm not going to show up.
How are we going to prove that case and why would we go to trial on a case that we know we can't prove that the victim and a lot of times victims of domestic violence are in a cycle of violence.
And and there's a lot of reasons why she would not want to come forward.
And we certainly want to respect that.
But again, we have to make those tough decisions.
We don't have a lot of time.
But what I would like to ask you about now is where do we go from here?
Obviously, you and the police chief shook hands the other night and got together.
There has been friction.
Will there be more communication?
How will that work and how how much of the criticism that you faced do you think was merited?
And will you make any changes after all of this?
We are looking to make changes, but I think what's important is communication that we continue to talk.
We're looking at ways that we can improve our job.
The reason I spoke up and I'd been trying and doing our job for many years, I'm going on my fifth year now.
But but the criticism that was leveled against me was unfair because it is not our office's fault that that someone is bound to set it a certain amount because we're not the ones that determine that.
I just want the public to know that.
However, we will continue.
I think we need to get beyond that and and commitments.
And I have agreed to work together because it is in the best interest of the community that we continue to collaborate and we continue to work together.
Well, we appreciate you coming in and talking about that.
And you will be talking with the chief later this week, I understand.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for coming in, District Attorney Joe Gonzales.
Thank you very.
This week, Bear County commissioners adopted a $2.95 billion budget.
Here to talk about what's in it, what's not, what's still could be accomplished in the coming weeks and months is County Commissioner Precinct three, Grant Moody.
Thank you very much for coming in.
Thanks for having me on.
Tell us about the budget.
Some of the process made the news in the last few days for little fireworks.
One of the commissioners, Tommy Calvert, did not did not like some things you say you voted for some amendments and things that didn't happen.
Tell us about what's in the budget.
First of all, before we get into the specifics of the last minute fight.
Yeah.
So this is the the sausage making of politics and it takes a lot of work.
It's been a long few weeks.
Ultimately, the budget is is fairly similar, I think, to previous budgets.
There was obviously some some questions and concerns that came out here recently.
But ultimately, I think it's about communication.
It's about making sure that we we continue to work well with our colleagues.
And, you know, ultimately we got it done.
It's behind us and we can move on to other items that need to be addressed.
When you tell taxpayers what the main priorities were, how much of this money was spent here, there and wherever?
What what do you tell them?
What are their what are the priorities that you wanted in the money that they get?
Well, I was really pleased to see the the large investment in public safety.
We added 50 additional deputy sheriffs.
We also added four additional constables per precinct, which was a significant and a historic investment in public safety.
We also added a historic pay raise for those deputy sheriffs and we're working on a pay increase for those constables as well.
But I hope to get done in the coming weeks.
But now cost of living adjustment for the other employees in the county didn't happen.
Well, no, it did.
To a certain extent there's there's still ongoing discussions and and over the next two years that's supposed to be addressed fully.
But yes, originally the implementation of the pay study was not complete.
And so there was some compression in the pay scales on the civilian side.
But ultimately, we're going to address that as well.
There are some things that you can address in the coming weeks, in in the months in this budget that may not have been specifically line item.
What are some of those that you want to still get into the budget?
Yes.
So the first one I mentioned is the cost of all pay.
I think it's important that we make sure that that they're paid competitively and that they can recruit for those new positions.
The Bear County medical examiner's office also came to court, had a request.
They are hugely understaffed and they need help.
One of the things they wanted to shift one of their medical examiners to a forensic anthropologist.
And I was supportive of that.
I believe their support on the court for that.
So hopefully we can get that done in the next few weeks.
I also mentioned in court yesterday I believe our impact courts need to go ahead and shift those impact.
Courts provide a great return on investment for us as a county when they're working through backlogs.
But they've worked through the backlog on the family violence, domestic violence side, and it's time to move into a new, new area of law, likely in felonies at the jail in order for us to continue to work through a new backlog.
And I think they can do that.
Now, County Commissioner Tommy Calvert was very angry that in the last few weeks or I'm not sure exactly the timeline that the the budget director decided to have an exact split so that each of the commissioners precincts would get something like $10 million in discretional funding or what they wanted that you said that's not enough and it shouldn't be specifically exactly the same for each of those precincts.
What do you say to that?
Well, you know, I didn't have a problem with the the process as it was laid out.
Obviously, ultimately, commissioners court decides what that process looks like.
I think in future years, we can have more of a discussion about how we how we want that process to go.
However, the 10 million, I think, was was adequate and reasonable across the different precincts.
I know the Commissioner Calvert.
You know, I'm not going to speak for him, but he had, you know, additional requests for Precinct four.
And then I think there were some other requests that maybe were more county wide that that could have been in previous budgets that were not in this budget, haven't driven all those issues yet.
But I think that was the gist of his concerns.
And one of the things that you objected to and voted against and I can't remember the specific what you call it, but was to make sure that the tax rate stayed the same.
They adopted this budget.
You wanted it to drop.
Yeah, it did.
Ultimately, this budget puts 20 million additionally into our general fund reserve.
That funding, in my opinion, is going towards bridging the gap for future spending and ultimately that 20 million could have gone back to taxpayers.
And that was my amendment.
That was my my reason for voting against the tax rate yesterday.
I just think that there was the opportunity to give that money back to taxpayers, and I wanted to do that.
In future years, where do you think the budget you talked about the law enforcement being the priority this year or a priority?
Where would you like to see other priorities get a little bit more focus and attention?
Infrastructure.
We didn't we didn't hear a lot about that, at least in the media.
Yeah, no, I'm I've spoke in court multiple times about that.
I do think we need to focus more on infrastructure, roads, bridges, flood control, vices, creeks and trails, which is consumed, I believe, over $600 million over the last decade.
That money, I think more and more of it should be flown into our roads and bridges rather than creeks and trails system.
Listen, I use creeks.
I use the trail system.
We go out and bike ride with the family.
But ultimately it seems backwards.
We should be spending more money on our roads and safety measures rather than on those trails.
Looking ahead, the ARPA money that we have had kind of helped the budgets city and county in the last couple of years.
They're going to be going away.
What is that going to do to the budgets in the future?
And do you see a crunch from that that we're kind of going to have to wean ourselves off of what's been really a boon?
Absolutely.
I think that's a real risk in the coming years.
Probably in the next three or four years, you're going to see all those ARPA funds expended.
Those ARPA funds were supposed to be one time expenses to deal with the effects of COVID.
Obviously, the effects of COVID have long since passed, but the money still being spent out there.
And the real concern is you've developed a whole new set of operating budgets and nonprofits out there that will want to continue into the future, but there won't be the funds in the budget to support it.
So I think, you know, that may be one of the reasons for trying to the court wanting to set aside reserve funds to help deal with that ARPA cliff, as I call it, in the future.
However, I think we're just going to have to make some tough decisions and have some difficult conversations with folks in the coming years.
We talked a minute before.
We're about out of time, but what's been the toughest thing for you over this past year?
Getting to know the whole process.
Getting to know the county commissioner.
What's been surprising to you as a, I guess, political novice coming in and doing this?
Well, you know, I'm really proud of the things we've accomplished on the law enforcement front.
We already spoke about those.
But ultimately, you know, even even those little things can be challenging and not the law enforcement was a little thing.
It was a big thing.
But but some of the little agenda items, trying to get support and get it to court and get it approved and implemented, it can be challenging.
Some of the stuff you thought was easy wasn't so.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for coming in.
County Commissioner Grant Moody, Precinct three.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me on the record This week, we're continuing our look at the county government as well as look at the city.
Joining us to talk about this is Andrea Dresch, who is the local politics reporter for the San Antonio Report.
Thank you very much for coming in.
Thanks for having me.
Now, let's talk about what's happened with the county since I a judge, Peter Takai, came in before Grant Moody.
We're looking to make some changes.
Very outspoken about what he wanted.
Whereas what have some of those changes been?
Or have some of them?
Are we still waiting to see some of those?
I think safe to say, still waiting to see some of those.
He would say yesterday after they or he would say earlier this week after they approved a budget, that there is still a lot of work to be done.
But remember that Takai was a county employee for a long time.
He was a civil court judge.
So he had a lot of ideas about sort of structurally, internally county manager related things that he wanted to look at when he took office.
And that has been a lot of his focus in the first six, eight months on the job.
So that has manifested itself in a review of all county policies.
He's made the county manager, who was brought in by his predecessor, Nelson Wolff, sort of justify every position in every policy that they have.
And as of the budget vote this week, he wrapped it up, thanking them for their work, but said we still have a lot of work to do.
This is a budget that they voted on three in favor, sorry for, in favor and one abstention.
And the whole budget process, as we've been talking about, used to be, I guess, a little more opaque, you could say to say the least.
But now that it's become more transparent, they're still pushing to get a lot more information out there and and to make it more public.
The deliberations, what has been recommended, have it be done earlier.
Do you think that's going to happen for the next time?
Well, in comparatively less opaque, the city sits down for like four hour budget meetings on every single department.
That is public.
The county threw in a couple of extra budget work sessions to try to bring it out into the light, give people more of an opportunity to come in and talk about what they want to see out of it.
But it is still a long way, I think, from being a transparent process.
Most people would agree.
And those budget work sessions were fireworks with the commissioners.
I think they were intended to sort of bring the new folks like Sakai and Christopher at Moody and give them more of an opportunity to see the process before they voted on it.
But it ended up being that the longest serving member of the court, Commissioner Tommy Calvert, was the one who dominated these discussions and said something to the effect of the era of doing things in the dark.
Here is over.
He's going to continue fighting this budget with a citizen committee that's going to be investigating it.
He's been doing his own investigations into the budget.
Interesting case to make since he's the one who's been there and talking to all these people.
Do you get a sense of how they are working together now, how that's changed over the past few months and what what this whole last couple of weeks has meant for them?
I think from the staff level, people seem beleaguered that the county staff is seems exhausted from this process.
I think they've had to justify the way that they're doing things.
Even the budget staff up until the last minute was, you know, receiving critiques on how they do things, which, you know, by the end of it, they seemed just exhausted.
And the commissioners themselves, the dynamic has been interesting.
You hear a lot more from Tommy Tommy Calvert since Sakai has taken over.
And Rebecca Clay Flores is kind of, you know, in the background there.
Those two have publicly sparred.
Some of Tommy Calvert's guests at the meeting publicly criticized her.
You saw her push back a little bit this week in the budget vote and say, look, that's not even how we do things.
We don't nothing is missing from the budget.
Nothing has been cut without our approval trying to defend herself a little bit there.
But the dynamic has caused these meetings to just go on for hours and hours and hours.
What do you think the focus is going to be for?
What are they going to try to make up for next year after this budget cycle?
That's a good question, because last year it all revolved around law enforcement.
It was this big spat between the county manager, David Smith, and the Bear County Sheriff's deputies that got so heated they were publicly fighting with each other in there.
And then this ended up the deputies partnered with state lawmakers to try to have a state mandate of how many sheriff's deputies the county was going to have.
That eventually was worked out.
I think probably some working with the commissioners didn't make it through the legislature.
They came together on this agreement that everybody on the commissioners court was excited about to add some new deputies.
I don't think they're quite out of the woods there yet.
After the meeting, there was discussion about whether there would be vehicles provided for these new deputies.
And David Smith had said, well, we're going to need the sheriff to provide the study of what all of these positions are doing before we provide vehicles for them.
So it's not like the tension has evaporated, but the focus this year was so different.
It was on these caps that the county manager had implemented.
He wanted ten and a half million dollars for each precinct, and that is where Tommy Calvert vehemently disagreed.
Do you think that will happen for next year or that will be headed off so much earlier that that won't become the issue that it has been right now?
Well, there's still an opportunity to fund a lot of these things over the course of the next year.
I think some of the other commissioners mentioned working with him, if these are truly projects that the county is committed to that need the help, they'll be able to find the money.
They still have ARPA money left over.
There's money in other places.
And moving to San Antonio politics or city politics.
The whole discussion between Chief McManus and D.A.
Gonzales, we heard from earlier different in the past couple of weeks.
What have you found out there were where is that going after that whole public rift?
Man, this reminds me of Gonzales, his reelection race, which, you know, he won overwhelmingly, but you would see him at times in rooms full of people who were very angry about public safety.
So really like arguing about the process and about what his office is and isn't responsible for, instead of talking about sort of how his policies are advancing the cause of public safety.
But I think at this point, you've seen even the local congressman get involved.
I had heard that there was an event this week, last week, where Tony Gonzalez, the local congressman, said he was going to go to war with his district attorney, Joe Gonzales.
So I feel like this is it's also just been a very successful political issue for the right, and everybody wants a piece of it now.
And looking ahead as well with the city in terms of the budget for officers, law enforcement support in general, at times the police chief has been on the defensive in terms of shootings.
And now there's a lot of public support because of the officers being shot and public support.
Before that, you saw the Justice charter really, you know, fail miserably on the on that one piece on the site and release the the idea that people would have to be issued a citation instead of an arrest.
And people just did not like that element and it failed 7030.
It's going to be interesting.
So but is it going to be a lull, you think, now for you, at least in terms of the reporting on this for the next week or two?
Oh, I don't know.
I mean, the county there's still a lot to unpack there.
There's still a lot I think that's going to happen.
And things that like the the employee raises that employees in this county budget do not get a cost of living increase.
That's something Justin Rodriguez was talking about.
We have to do before the next budget.
Still a lot to happen there.
And then on the city side, just a historic windfall of money that they weren't really expecting from CPS energy revenue.
CPS said that they were able to sell energy during the ERCOT emergencies that yielded about $104 million in profit for them, of which the city gets about $20 million.
And that is money that came under fire recently in the legislature.
City leaders were breathing a sigh of relief that that didn't go anywhere.
There was a bill trying to curb what cities can do with that money from municipally owned utilities.
And at the time, their argument for all of the you know, their approach in Austin had been we're not doing anything crazy over here in San Antonio.
We gave that money back last time.
CPS money.
We don't we don't need HB 2127.
We don't have a bag ban.
We're not doing paid sick leave.
But now, obviously, we have delved more into social issues and more politically charged issues with this round of CPS energy right now.
And so there is going to be a lot for you to recover, to recover, recover and recover, hopefully at some point and unpack.
And the San Antonio report.
Thank you very much.
Andrea Dresch, local politics reporter.
Thank you.
And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.
You can see this show again or preview shows as well as download the podcast at KLRN dot org.
I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho
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