By Dave Lieber
The Dallas Morning News
For me, the Great Texas Electricity Scandal of 2021 was foreshadowed years before by a little electricity company operating out of a Shell gas station in Fort Worth.
Picture this. Customers came in to buy Shell gas and also electricity from the company, Proton Energy.
The Public Utility Commission accused the owner of 1,000 different violations, the most serious being cutting power to customers during extreme weather events. This company did almost everything wrong an electricity company could do.
The PUC shut it down. But just the fact that it even existed was quite telling.
The company’s lawyer, a former PUC lawyer, offered me the best explanation: “Proton is not perfect,” he said in classic lawyer understatement.
TOP 10 TEXAS SCANDALS
How does the current electricity catastrophe rank among the top Texas scandals? The Watchdog offers suggestions for the top 10 Texas scandals of the past century ranked in order of importance.
10. SMU FOOTBALL
The banishment of SMU’s Mustangs football team under the NCAA’s “death penalty” in the late 1980s is probably the greatest Texas college sports scandal. Players were handed illegal cash payments, and there were recruiting violations.
The university was restricted from playing in bowl games, and its games were not allowed to be televised live. Home games were canceled. The powerhouse program all but disappeared.
9. J.R. EWING
Yes, I know he’s not real. But does the rest of the world? I mean, worldwide, when people hear about Dallas, they think of the TV show. And don’t we all know someone who has a little J.R. within him or her?
8. CARTER HIGH FOOTBALL TEAM
More football follies. They say the 1988 Dallas Carter High football team was one of the best in state history. But Carter’s star player, Gary Edwards, had failed algebra, meaning he wouldn’t qualify for the state championship game under the then-new no pass/no play rule.
I include this because it symbolizes Texas’ devotion to high school football over academics. Also, I talked to both Edwards and to his algebra teacher, Wilfred M. Bates, before he died.
Lawsuits were filed, and Edwards got to play. Carter won the state title, the first Dallas high school in almost four decades to win the big one.
But afterward, six players were connected to almost two dozen robberies. In 1991, the UIL stripped Carter of the title.
In 2004, Bates told me, “I was trying to be the best teacher that I could. I did what was right. I stood up for right.”
Bates gave Edwards grades of 40, 60, 60 and 35. But he told me if Edwards had completed only one assignment, he would have passed him. But Edwards didn’t go to class. For sticking by his principles, though, Bates was never allowed to teach math again.
When I talked to Edwards in 2017, he hatched his own conspiracy theory, telling me that Bates was from Plano and was rooting for the other team. Bates’ son called that preposterous. His dad lived in Duncanville.
Edwards told me he was sticking with his story, adding, “I don’t care what anyone says.”
