TX Gov Abbott Caught With His Thumb On the Scale in ERCOT Price Boosting Scheme
Greg Abbott is having a bad news day.
Aside from his attacking transgender children, it was revealed that the Republican Texas Governor ordered power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s frigid winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies.
The Houston Chronicle reported on Wednesday that the decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric. Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced them into bankruptcy.
BREAKING: Texas' ERCOT has announced tight grid conditions tonight thru Friday. So just remember when your power goes out that when Texas Republicans and Greg Abbott had the chance to pass *real* reforms to the grid, they passed abortion bans and voter suppression laws instead.
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) February 23, 2022
Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting to come back online, former Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker had told him that Abbott wanted them to “do whatever was necessary” to prevent further rotating blackouts that left millions of Texans without power.
.@GregAbbott_TX is in a lot of trouble here. He knew what was happening with #ERCOT last year. He kept the prices high, charged it to Texas taxpayers then his buddies paid him off with millions in campaign contributions. #txlege https://t.co/jAIon9ZP44
— Reed Galen (@reedgalen) February 23, 2022
Magness, who was fired last year, has long defended his and other ERCOT officials’ actions as “necessary to keep the grid from slipping into a total blackout that could take weeks or months to recover from”. But in testimony in federal bankruptcy court in Houston Tuesday and Wednesday, he explained in detail how Walker had come to ERCOT’s operations center in the middle of the crisis and relayed to him Abbott’s demand that rotating blackouts come to an end.
Abbott screwed us.
He’ll continue to screw us until we vote him out. https://t.co/KTL3gCy0T0
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) February 23, 2022
Read the full Houston Chronicle profile here.