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This is decided in Austin, not San Antonio. Here is who votes on it and what to say.
Who actually decides
Restructuring a municipally owned utility requires an act of the Texas Legislature. Your state representative and state senator will vote on it — not your city council member, and not the CPS board.
The Legislature next convenes in 2027. That is far enough away that nothing is decided, and close enough that positions are being formed now.
Find yours at Who Represents Me — enter your address and it returns both, with phone numbers and email.
What to say
Short, specific, and local beats long and general. Staff count contacts by position and district. Five points that are hard to argue with, each of which you can check before you send it:
- What the city actually gets. CPS Energy pays the City of San Antonio $492 million a year — 29.88% of the General Fund, more than property tax brings in.Source
- Where a cut would land. 62% of General Fund spending is police and fire. A cut to CPS revenue lands there by arithmetic, not by anyone’s choice.Source
- What deregulation actually delivered. Not what it advertised. Across every deregulated household in Texas, the price really billed was 16.66¢/kWh, against 12.43¢ for CPS Energy customers — about $571 a year more on typical usage.Source
- Who the savings actually go to. Households that shop actively and re-shop every year. The cost of replacing the city’s revenue is spread across everyone, including those who do not.
- The question to ask directly. If this passes, what replaces that revenue — a property tax increase, a sales tax increase, or service cuts?
Say it in your own words
A form letter is counted once and forgotten. Two sentences about your own bill, your own neighbourhood and what you would want cut instead carries more weight than anything on this page. Use the figures to be accurate, not to sound like a briefing.
Bring your own numbers
The most persuasive thing you can send is your own bill. Run your last twelve months through the comparison tool — it takes the kWh figure from each statement — and tell them what you found, whether it favours CPS or not.
That last part matters. In several Texas markets the typical advertised offer currently beats CPS Energy, and our tool says so plainly. Sending a legislator a number they can check, including one that cuts against your own argument, is what makes the rest of it land.
Talk to your neighbours
Most people have not heard about this at all, and the two things that surprise them most are:
- The $492 million the city would have to replace — verifiable on the city’s own transparency portal in about a minute.
- The gap between what electricity is advertised for and what Texans actually paid for it.
If someone is not sure how any of this works, the plain-English explainer walks through who does what, and why the advertised rate is not the rate most people end up on.
Get told when something happens
Nothing is voted on until 2027, and there is no point in anyone paying attention continuously until then. Leave an email and you will hear when something real occurs — a bill filed, a hearing scheduled, a vote coming up, or a figure on this site corrected. Nothing else, and never sold or shared.
Found an error instead?
That is also taking action, and it is welcome. Every figure here traces to a primary document through the Sources page. If one of them is wrong, tell us — corrections matter more to us than the argument does.