CPS’ CEO will get no golden parachute

But Gold-williams will receive $200,000 for unused vacation time, retirement benefits

CPS Energy CEO Paula Goldwilliams won’t be equipped with a golden parachute when she leaves the city-owned utility in January.

But she’ll still exit with a nice payday, according to terms of her employment contract.

Gold-williams will receive compensation for nearly 28 weeks of unused vacation time, worth more than $200,000.

Her retirement benefits include a pension and payouts from her 457 plan, which is a version of a 401(k) plan for government employees. The value of her retirement benefits was unclear.

Gold-williams, 59, also will receive her base salary until her departure. By mid-january, she will have received just over $100,000 — three months’ worth of salary — since she announced in October that she’s leaving.

Her annual base salary was $415,000 a year before incentives.

On Oct. 15, Gold-williams announced her decision to step down after a series of crises over the past year and a half — from the economic fallout from the pandemic to the deadly winter storm in February. During the storm, the utility was forced to spend about $1 billion for electricity and natural gas on the spot market.

CPS has paid $418 million of the charges, packaging that amount into a so-called regulatory asset. That’s debt that ratepayers will be paying off with small increases in their monthly bills over the next 25 years.

CPS is contesting about $600 million of the storm tab in lawsuits against 17 gas suppliers. The utility has accused the companies of taking advantage of the weather emergency to charge extortionate prices.

The utility is expected to ask its five-member board of trustees and San Antonio City Council to approve a rate increase of 8 percent in the next few months.

In the meantime, public support for CPS has fallen. A Bexar Facts poll of 602 Bexar County residents in late September found that 52 percent disapproved of the utility’s job performance — in part because of prolonged power outages during the February freeze.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator,

ordered “rolling” outages. But CPS also had power-generation problems to contend with. Its power plants operated at only 85 percent capacity because of several weather-related glitches.

Gold-williams came under tremendous pressure.

Since she opted to step down, she won’t receive a severance package, CPS officials said.

Had CPS’ board fired Gold-williams, she would have been eligible for six months’ of severance pay — around $207,000 — and her

unpaid incentive bonuses, according to her employment contract. Gold-williams’ combined incentives this year were worth up to $350,000.

Earlier this month, CPS elevated executive Rudy Garza to interim CEO following Gold-williams’ retirement announcement.

This year, four other senior executives likewise left CPS, including Chief Operating Officer Fred Bonewell. He resigned last month.

Golds-williams promoted Bonewell

to COO in June despite eight internal complaints previously made against him.

Employees under Bonewell, who joined CPS in 2015, said he spent company money seemingly without a budget — including the purchase of personal items such as earbuds — and sometimes disappeared from the office for hours, leaving assistants scrambling to reschedule his meetings.

In one morning meeting in late October 2018, Bonewell allegedly entered a room with four other employees and asked, “Where are all of the Mexicans?” The comment prompted an employee to file a complaint with CPS’ ethics and compliance hotline.

Bonewell was paid nearly $81,000 after leaving CPS. He received two weeks’ pay and $65,000 for his accrued vacation days, according to the utility.

CPS has not yet named his replacement.