Good morning!

Worried about your upcoming electric bill? That’s the subject of our One Click Survey.

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Tuesday, February 23, 2021
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• But first, a special note of appreciation to everyone participating in last night’s Legislative Report call. These special briefings are made available to Texas Scorecard’s active donors.
      
• The next Legislative Report call will be on Monday, March 22. (Not yet a donor? You can be starting today! 😀)

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced he’s launching an investigation to “pursue justice for Texans” following last week’s power outages during the winter storm. Jacob Asmussen has the details.
   
• Paxton has issued civil investigative demands to a handful of Texas power companies as well as ERCOT, the state government’s power grid management agency. Paxton is requiring them to hand over an array of documents related to last week’s disaster, such as recent communications between ERCOT and power companies, emergency plans and safety protocols for cold weather operations, and evidence of their efforts to winterize the power grid.
   
• “I’m using the full scope of my constitutional powers to launch an investigation into ERCOT and other entities that grossly mishandled this week’s extreme winter weather. While Texans pulled together to get their communities through this disaster, they were largely left in the dark.” – Ken Paxton

• Energy policy expert Bill Peacock analyzes the coordinated messaging being employed by the mainstream media and leftwing interest groups in the wake of last week’s energy debacle. They are quick to point the blame at everything except the real problems, Peacock writes.
   
• “The Texas Legislature can restore sanity to the Texas electric grid by eliminating all subsidies and benefits for renewables in Texas, directing the PUC to require that wind and solar operators rather than consumers bear the costs their intermittency and federal subsidies impose on the grid, and ending the PUC’s constant intervention in the Texas electric market—like the electricity tax that cost Texans $3.6 billion in 2019.” – Bill Peacock

• The Texas House will gavel into session at 2 p.m. today. The Texas Senate will gavel in at 4 p.m.
   
• On Thursday there will be a joint hearing of the Texas House Energy Resources Committee and State Affairs Committee to discuss last week’s electrical blackouts.

• As millions of Texans suffered last week during historic winter storms and catastrophic power outages, city officials in Austin left a $1 billion power plant completely offline. Jacob Asmussen has the details.
    

• The city’s East Texas biomass power plant—a facility that burns wood waste to generate more than 100 megawatts of power—was not turned on a single time during the crisis week. It could have powered more than 20,000 homes. A spokesman for the city-owned Austin Energy said the plant was turned off because they switched the facility last year to only seasonal use.

• A recent study of local government financial reports found Plano was the only major Texas city to enter last year’s COVID-19 shutdowns in good fiscal health. The rest were already “sinkhole cities” needing more money from taxpayers to pay their bills—coming mostly from growing unfunded retirement obligations. Robert Montoya reports on the latest report from the watchdog group Truth in Accounting.
     
• Democrat-run Dallas earned the worst ranking in Texas, scoring 61st out of the 75 cities studied nationwide.

• New court filings show Facebook played a bigger role in the Capitol riots than Parler, writes Rachel Bovard in a new commentary.
   
• “If any single platform can be fingered as the favorite of the rioters, it appears to be Facebook.” – Rachel Bovard

• Speaking of which... you can find me on Parler, MeWe, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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