{"id":46871,"date":"2021-03-06T00:00:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T00:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=46871"},"modified":"2021-03-06T00:00:06","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T00:00:06","slug":"legislature-feels-the-heat-from-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=46871","title":{"rendered":"Legislature feels the heat from the storm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By JOHN KANELIS<\/strong> \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

What do you suppose is on the minds of the 181 men and women meeting in the State Capitol for the next few weeks? I think I know.<\/p>\n

One of those things has to do with electricity, and whether Texas can avoid the problems it encountered when a monstrous winter storm blew in over the state in the middle of February. Millions of Texans lost their electricity, the ability to heat their homes. What\u2019s more, the water went out in millions of other homes and businesses.<\/p>\n

Legislators convened their session in early January and Gov. Greg Abbott tasked them during the storm to get busy looking for solutions to the crisis, which he deemed \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have set out trying to learn what Northeast Texas legislators are thinking about how to solve the problem. One possible \u2013 albeit preliminary \u2013 idea comes from freshman state Sen. Drew Springer, who has filed a Senate bill requiring that all members of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas actually live in the state where ERCOT manages the electrical grid.<\/p>\n

Springer, a Republican from Muenster, moved to the state Senate from the state House of Representatives after winning a special election in Senate District 30 to replace former state Sen. Pat Fallon, who was elected to the U.S. House.<\/p>\n

Seven members of the ERCOT board have quit; six of them live outside the state. Springer wants to invoke a residency requirement, a notion endorsed enthusiastically by state Rep. Scott Sanford, a Republican from McKinney.<\/p>\n

At issue are ways to prevent catastrophic failure, which ERCOT said could have happened, that the state electrical grid was literally minutes<\/em> away from complete collapse.<\/p>\n

Solutions will cost money. They might involve investment of huge sums of money to winterize the power generating system. Sanford is open to dipping into the state\u2019s Rainy Day Fund. \u201cWhatever we decide,\u201d Sanford said, \u201cTexans are going to pay, either through taxes or utility costs.\u201d The Rainy Day Fund, though, could be available to help defray some of that cost. \u201cIt didn\u2019t rain, but we had an emergency on a large scale,\u201d Sanford said.<\/p>\n

State Rep. Bryan Slaton, a Royse City Republican, said he isn\u2019t terribly concerned about the price tag associated with the repair of the grid, declaring that the state simply has to get the job done.<\/p>\n

Slaton, serving in his first legislative session, said he lost power at his Royse City home \u201cfor just a little while,\u201d but added that the apartment where he lives during the session with his wife and children lost power and water for several days. \u201cI wasn\u2019t in Austin when the power went out,\u201d Slaton said, adding that \u201cit took me six hours to drive from Austin to home,\u201d noting that it usually takes a lot less time.<\/p>\n

Slaton said he is willing to work \u201cas long as it takes\u201d to find a solution to the electrical grid problems.<\/p>\n

He said the failures were across the board and all the energy sources need attention. As for whether \u201cgreen energy\u201d was a major culprit, as suggested by Gov. Greg Abbott, Slaton said \u201cgreen energy has proven to be unreliable.\u201d He said wind and solar plants froze up, as did natural gas stations. Slaton believes nuclear energy, which provides even less power to the grid than solar or wind energy, is \u201cthe most reliable source\u201d that Texans can use.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of things went wrong with the grid,\u201d Slaton said. He said that in 2019, state Sen. Bob Hall of Van Zandt County and state Rep. Tony Tinderholt \u2013 both Republicans \u2013 commissioned a study to look at ways to \u201charden the grid.\u201d Slaton said he is unclear on the status of the report they submitted but suggested it might provide a good starting point for the 2021 Legislature to consider.<\/p>\n

He also said that he has filed a bill to require that the Public Utility Commission of Texas become an elected rather than an appointed body. \u201cThat way, when things go wrong, we can hold the PUC board accountable at the ballot box,\u201d Slaton said.<\/p>\n

Sanford, who is executive pastor (which he said is akin to being business manager) of Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, is serving in his fifth legislative session after winning election in 2012. He said, \u201cThe first thing we have to do is understand what happened and examine the policies that contributed to the crisis.\u201d He said the state hasn\u2019t yet \u201creached that point\u201d of determining which policies to change.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Sanford experienced some personal misery at his home in McKinney, which he said suffered from a burst water pipe. So, it is safe to presume that the lawmaker also has some skin in this legislative game of looking for solutions to the state\u2019s electrical grid.<\/p>\n

Sanford did say that ERCOT and the PUC need to develop greater ability to \u201csend up red flags\u201d and then communicate to Texans in advance of these weather events how to deal with them. \u201cThe warning system needs to be transformed,\u201d Sanford said.<\/p>\n

Slaton and Sanford seem to disagree \u2013 if only a little a bit \u2013 on whether Gov. Abbott was correct to blame the Green New Deal for the failure of the electrical system, although Sanford is reluctant to get into a partisan battle. \u201cThe last thing we need to do is get into a Democrat vs. Republican deal,\u201d Sanford said, imploring the Legislature to \u201cput Texans first.\u201d Sanford did say that he prefers \u201creliable\u201d energy over \u201crenewable\u201d energy, which he suggested has proven so far to be an unreliable source for Texans.<\/p>\n

Sanford said he is \u201cintrigued\u201d by the idea that Slaton has pitched, making the PUC an elected body, and he \u201cabsolutely\u201d believes the state should require ERCOT board members to live in Texas.<\/p>\n

Slaton said he is willing to work \u201cfor as long as it takes\u201d to find solutions to the disaster that the state came within minutes of experiencing.<\/p>\n

It seems a safe bet to presume that Rep. Slaton’s legislative colleagues are willing as well to stay on the job until they fix the problem. Millions of Texas residents will demand it.<\/p>\n

Rest assured I will be among them.<\/p>\n

BLOGGER’S NOTE: A version of this blog was published initially on KETR-FM’s website.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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By JOHN KANELIS \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com What do you suppose is on the minds of the 181 men and women meeting in the State Capitol for the next few weeks? I think I know. One of those things has to do with electricity, and whether Texas can avoid the problems it encountered when a monstrous winter … Continue reading Legislature feels the heat from the storm<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1611,9641,4653,9619],"class_list":["post-46871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ercot","tag-puc","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-winter-storm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46871"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46875,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46871\/revisions\/46875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}