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SAM COATS STICKS WITH TXI BOARD DESPITE CALL TO QUIT

Mayoral candidate Sam Coats, a likeable and well-liked guy with an environmental bent that includes membership in groups like Nature Conservancy, is nonetheless bedeviled with his 2005 decision to accept an invitation to serve on the board of TXI, the cement-maker and hazardous waste burner that sends toxic pollutants into Dallas and Fort Worth just about every day. Last week, he met with members of Downwinders at Risk, which has been trying to reform TXI for years. The meeting didn’t work out so well. The group asked Coats to step down from the TXI board and divest all stock and do other things detailed in the Downwinders news release in the jump. He said no.

Coats sticks to his position that he can do more to clean up TXI by staying on the board (what LBJ called being inside the tent and pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in). He says if he is elected mayor, and any conflict of interest is perceived, he would resign from the board, but that for now he doesn’t think there is any.

If he is elected, he should quit the board. The points raised by Downwinders are not easily dismissable if a person is mayor of a city that may be in litigation or at least lobbying against a polluter on which the mayor is a board member. But that may be getting ahead of ourselves. For better or worse, Coats will be on the TXI board the duration of the campaign, and it will be up to voters to agree or disagree with his rationale. [Note to Sam: working from the inside has its merits. So does a symbolic act. IJS.]

[from Downwinders at Risk]

(Dallas)-A local clean air group is deriding Dallas mayoral candidate Sam Coats decision not to quit his membership on the board of cement giant TXI, or even pledge to distance himself from the company’s campaign to defeat air quality measures backed by current Mayor Laura Miller and Dallas City Hall.

“He doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of conflict-of-interest,” said Jim Schermbeck, staff organizer of DFW-based Downwinders At Risk.”

Downwinders, the 12-year old group that has made the nation’s largest concentration of cement plants in Midlothian its central focus, met privately with Coats after his membership on TXI’s board was revealed earlier in the month. This is the first time the group has spoken out about the results of that meeting, because, representatives say, they wanted to give Coats an opportunity to differentiate himself from the company’s policies that put it at odds with cleaner air in DFW.

“We believe we were being fair and discreet in proposing the meeting, and the pledge. His public statements insisting that he’s ‘working on the inside’ to change TXI policy are not supported by any evidence we’ve seen, or that he’s offered.”

TXI owns the largest cement plant in Texas, located in Midlothian, just across the Dallas County line. It is the single largest industrial source of smog pollution in north Texas and burns hazardous wastes in circa-1960s kilns that don’t have modern pollution controls.

According to Schermbeck, a group of Downwinders members met with Coats March 30th to propose that he either quit his paid TXI board position and sell his stock in the company, valued at between $37,000 and $74,000, or sign a pledge supporting: 1) the installation of pollution controls on TXI’s older kilns in Midlothian, 2) suspension of of toxic waste burning in those same kilns, 3) a city-backed bill in the state legislature (SB 1177) mandating testing of advanced controls that could cut TXI pollution by 80-90%, and, 4) the new “clean air cement “ procurement policy, coming before the Dallas City Council in May. After giving Coats four days to consider the proposal, Schermbeck said he declined to do anything at all. “We even checked back a second time to see if any compromise was possible, but the rejection was total.”

Coats joined the TXI board in 2005, after a decade of controversy involving the company, including a well-publicized hazardous waste permit fight, and the inclusion of Ellis County into the DFW “non-attainment area” for smog over Congressman “Smokey Joe” Barton’s objections. But according to Schermbeck, Coats had “an appalling lack of knowledge” about the company’s Midlothian operations. “Even a casual reader of the Dallas Morning News would have known more. His lack of due diligence about the company is as disturbing as his refusal to disassociate himself from it.”

Schermbeck noted that Coats is running for Mayor and maintaining his membership on the TXI board of directors even while the company is lobbying directly against the City of Dallas and other local governments over the fate of SB1177. TXI’s also working to defeat a proposed Dallas procurement policy aimed at steering City Hall money away from the kind of obsolete kilns that burn hazardous waste at its local cement plant. A Dallas City Council vote on the procurement policy is scheduled for May 9th.

“At the same time he’s campaigning for Mayor, his company is campaigning to undermine the City’s clean air agenda. That’s the very definition of conflict-of-interest,” according to Schermbeck.

He said Downwinders At Risk is considering a variety of tactics to make sure Dallas residents know about Coats’ connection to TXI, including media buys, a door-to-door canvass, and showing up at mayoral forums to press the issue.

“We deeply regret we have to take this kind of approach. We did not intend to be spending our time this way. But In 2007, it’s unacceptable that a TXI board member could imagine they could successfully run for office in North Texas without repudiating the policies that have made the company the number one corporate enemy of cleaner air in DFW,” said Schermbeck.