Austin Mayor Steve Adler attacked his state's governor on Tuesday, writing on Twitter that Governor Greg Abbott is more interested in business than the needs of the people when it comes to power outages.
The mayor wrote about Abbott "boasting about Texas being good for business" before declaring that "[ma]ybe when a corporation tells the governor that an unreliable power grid is bad for business, he'll finally listen. He doesn't seem to care about whether it's bad for people."
And from his official @GovAbbott account, boasting about Texas being good for business.
— Mayor Adler | Get vaccinated! (@MayorAdler) June 15, 2021
Maybe when a corporation tells the governor that an unreliable power grid is bad for business, he'll finally listen. He doesn't seem to care about whether it's bad for people.
Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the organization that operates 90 percent of the state's power to around 25 million, released an alert on Monday urging Texans to conserve energy due to many forced generation outages.
The conservation alert comes a few months after millions in the state lost power for days during February's winter storm. ERCOT received much of the blame for that outage, with critics saying the company's power grids were ineffective and its communication about the situation was lacking.
Earlier on Tuesday, Adler tweeted the following: "It's Day Two of conservation warnings from @GregAbbott_TX delicate power infrastructure. It's still technically spring and Texas is experiencing late-summer temperatures, power plants offline, and the governor is tweeting about a border wall that he can't fund."
The comment regarding a border wall is in reference to recent statements from Abbott about funding a wall on the boundary Texas shares with Mexico. The governor first committed to building a wall on June 10 while speaking at a Border Security Summit he hosted in Del Rio, Texas. During an episode of the conservative talk show podcast Ruthless released on Tuesday, Abbott provided more details by saying the wall would be funding through online contributions.
On June 8, Abbott signed two bills into law that he said would address the state's power grid to avoid another potential incident like the one that happened in February. The bills give the state more say in ERCOT appointments and laying out better safety and communication procedures. After Abbott signed the bills, he stated: "Bottom line is that everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas."
Texas ranked #1 again.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) June 15, 2021
We received the 2021 Gold Shovel Award that recognizes the best states for attracting high-value-added economic development projects that create a significant number of new jobs.
Thanks to all the job creators in Texas.https://t.co/sT6jgbnWf5
Abbott has not mentioned the ERCOT conservation alert in statements or on Twitter as of press time. He tweeted on Monday about Texas receiving a 2021 Gold Shovel Award, which recognizes states for dealings with businesses that meet criteria such as high-valued added jobs, the number of new facilities, industry diversity, etc.
Adler's Twitter message linked ERCOT's alert with Abbott's tweet about the Gold Shovel Award, in which the governor boasted: "Texas ranked #1 again."
Newsweek contacted Abbott and Adler for comment but did not hear back from either in time for publication.
