Monday Musings #10: Can the City of San Antonio and the State’s Top Elected Leaders Find Common Ground?

An unexpected opportunity has developed for Mayor Ron Nirenberg in his final months in office, and other civic and business leaders, to grasp an olive branch extended by Gov. Greg Abbott in his Feb. 2 State of the State speech.

In the speech, Abbott outlined his seven “emergency” agenda items slated for expedited consideration in the Texas Legislature. The governor called for the creation of a Texas Cyber Command to be headquartered in San Antonio. The center would leverage the considerable existing cyber assets in San Antonio, including the 67th Cyberspace Wing, headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, part of the Sixteenth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber), Air Combat Command here, and UTSA’s national reputation for its portfolio of cyber programs and degrees.

UTSA President Taylor Eighmy recently discussed the university’s expanding offerings in cybersecurity on Episode 100 of my bigcitysmalltown podcast. He highlighted UTSA’s latest investment in the field:

“We are creating a new College of AI, Cyber, and Computing that will be monumental—not replicated or evident anywhere else in the United States,” Eighmy said in the podcast (his remarks edited for brevity).

He also emphasized the university’s readiness to support the governor’s initiative, calling it a natural extension of UTSA’s work:

“The opportunity to work with the governor’s office on bringing a cybersecurity agency for the state of Texas to San Antonio only reinforces the importance of what we’re building here … The Texas Cyber Command will further establish our role as a national leader in cyber, AI, and data science, and UTSA is uniquely positioned to support and drive that effort forward.”

The Texas Cyber Command, Abbot said, would enable the state to directly protect public and private entities in Texas to shield their systems, data, and operating authority against the growing number of cyber attacks by state and non-state actors. The command would require legislators to pass a bill creating and funding the Command.

"We cannot let any more time go by without strongly, robustly addressing this problem," Abbott said in his address, "And that is why I am calling for an emergency item to create the Texas Cyber Command, to better secure our state from cyber attacks."

The center would considerably enhance UTSA’s national profile and its growing Downtown Campus, where San Pedro II will be completed later this year and with the existing San Pedro I, house the new College of AI, Cyber, Data Science and Computing.

This would seem to be a fitting time for Nirenberg to lead an A List delegation of civic and business leaders to Austin for a joint press conference with Abbott, the local delegation and state legislative leaders in a display of unity to support establishment and funding of the new Command. 

Optics matter, of course, so media coverage showing state and city leaders working together rather than at odds would serve an important purpose going forward, and as mayoral and council candidates campaign in advance of the May 3 city election, the opportunity is there for the city to hit the reset button with Abbott and others.

City and state leaders have been at odds in multiple legislative sessions over the last decade as state leaders attempted to limit home rule authority on annexation, levying taxes, managing waves of immigrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border. State leaders have clashed with city and county leaders on everything from pandemic lockdowns and vaccinations to how local election officials promote voting options.

Regular readers of my columns over the years know that I lean toward the city on many of these issues, but I also see an opportunity now for San Antonio to benefit significantly if the city can move successfully into an extended period of collaboration with the political leaders who control the state’s burgeoning treasury and biennial budget. That cooperation can not only lead to the establishment of the new Texas Cyber Command. It also can include improved funding for both public schools and teachers, as well as other investments in UTSA and Texas A&M-San Antonio.

Equally important, a political truce would allow local and regional leaders to push for significant infrastructure investments in mass transportation, affordable housing, water conservation and management, and management of the state’s power grid. Many of these badly needed projects are longshots, politically speaking, but there is no doubt they will not move forward no matter how many windfall billions the state currently enjoys if city and state leaders remain at serious odds.

I see opportunity knocking at San Antonio’s front door. Given that the San Antonio metro area is one of the fastest growing in the state, long-term investments are critical. Bigcitysmalltown will host many of the mayoral candidates in April. This opportunity will be on the agenda.