{"id":399873,"date":"2026-08-07T02:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T02:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/399873\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T02:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T02:48:09","slug":"governors-new-energy-plan-fuels-debate-about-cps-energy-payments-going-into-city-of-san-antonio-general-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/399873\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor’s new energy plan fuels debate about CPS Energy payments going into City of San Antonio general budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s plan to break up the energy sector<\/a> in cities like San Antonio and Austin has brought up a more focused discussion about where some of that CPS Energy money is used. <\/p>\n

The newly proposed legislation<\/a> would make it illegal for a city-owned energy utility like CPS Energy to dominate the market.<\/p>\n

A ripple effect of that could deeply affect the City of San Antonio\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

The City of San Antonio and CPS Energy confirm 14% of the money collected from CPS Energy bills goes into the City of San Antonio\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe law will prevent city utilities from charging consumers for unrelated costs, using your electricity payment to fund city budgets,\u201d Abbott said. <\/p>\n

A map of CPS Energy\u2019s coverage area shows an inner section in green, representing customers within San Antonio city limits.<\/p>\n

In blue are small cities in the San Antonio area like Windcrest, Alamo Heights, Castle Hills and Balcones Heights. The blue also includes all county areas.<\/p>\n

CPS Energy customer Carl Duelm hosted the governor at his Northeast Side home on Tuesday, agreeing with his proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe money, it goes into a slush fund to where (the City of San Antonio) can disperse the money however they want,\u201d Duelm said.<\/p>\n

Even though Duelm does live in the City of San Antonio and benefits from those services, he still doesn\u2019t agree with where the CPS Energy money ends up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think people should being paying into something they don\u2019t even know what they\u2019re paying into,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones was on KSAT and explained the money goes into the city\u2019s general fund. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a slush fund. Those are investments and things we pay for that contribute to the safety and health of our community,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

She listed vital services the general fund fuels. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat money is going to pay for cops and police. We pay for 2,400 meals for seniors. Every year that comes to about $3.3 million that we pay for those senior meals. Just in June, that contribution is just shy of $38 million. It would be a significant hit to our general fund to not have that source of income,\u201d Jones said. <\/p>\n

Jones said if the governor\u2019s law passes, the city would have to bring in new revenue streams in a time when they\u2019re already trying to tackle a future $158 million budget shortfall. <\/p>\n

Abbott said Tuesday he has tried to pass this type of legislation before, but it never got enough votes. <\/p>\n

If it passes this time, it could go into effect by May.<\/p>\n

Read also:<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s plan to break up the energy sector in cities like San Antonio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10807,451,392,82,84,83,51314],"class_list":["post-399873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-cps-energy","tag-energy","tag-greg-abbott","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-we-follow-through"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}