SINKING SHIP

Restless City: The thinning ranks in CPS Energy’s executive suite a bad sign for its CEO.

Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when a CEO begins to morph into a goner — when her decisions come under new, unforgiving scrutiny and her support starts to evaporate.

CPS Energy CEO Paula GoldWilliams isn’t there yet. But she might be getting close.

The $11.6 billion organization she runs is insular and tightlipped, overseen by a self-perpetuating board of trustees. So the resignations of CPS’ general counsel and her two deputies earlier this month count as a stunning development.

It’s hard to read the exodus as anything other than a judgment on Gold-Williams’ leadership and the decision to launch a barrage of lawsuits against 17 natural gas suppliers and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas after February’s deep freeze.

But Gold-Williams’ problems didn’t start inside the city-owned utility’s sleek new headquarters on McCullough Avenue. They started with CPS customers.

Storm’s bitter aftermath

Four months after Winter Storm Uri brutalized Texas, ratepayers are still seething.

They haven’t forgotten what it was like to make do in the freezing cold without power for hours or days on end. The fact that

ERCOT, Texas’ power grid operator, ordered the blackouts that made their lives so miserable doesn’t count for much.

The utility’s public communications during the crisis were spotty and at times lacked empathy. A tweet from Feb. 16, the day the magnitude of the crisis sank in, is a prime example: “Paula

Gold-Williams: We aren’t looking at individual people. We are looking at the stability of the grid and trying to help San Antonio through this situation.”

A Bexar Facts-KSAT poll in early April charted the collapse of CPS’ public approval. It fell to 46 percent from 78 percent a year earlier. The share of respondents

who strongly disapproved of the utility’s performance rose from 4 percent to 26 percent.

And that was before CPS’ billcredit debacle.

Many customers were insulted by the miserly, one-time rebates CPS announced in April. The utility knocked $8.75 off the monthly bills of the 250,000-plus

customers who went without electricity for at least 24 hours during the freeze. No power for 48 hours or more? You got an additional credit of between $50 and $100 for your trouble.

And last month, Gold-Williams said CPS is considering a rate hike to deal with the mountain of debt

Bob Owen / Staff photographer It’s hard to see high profile departures from CPS Energy as anything other than a judgment on CEO Paula Gold-Williams.