Peter Sakai came to Commissioners Court with humble ambitions.
While other candidates vying to replace retiring longtime Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff had visions of new downtown development, or using the office to fight back against leaders at the state Capitol, Sakai, a longtime district judge, dreamed of bringing order and transparency to the internal operations of county government.
A year into the job, however, Sakai’s bureaucratic endeavors are already at risk of being eclipsed by the political maneuvering of commissioners with more experience at the dais.
In one remarkable display of the court’s internal power struggles, a senior department head was forced to apologize this month after a leaked email appeared to show county staff covering its tracks after canceling a project in Commissioner Tommy Calvert’s Precinct 4 to favor a different project in Commissioner Justin Rodriguez’s Precinct 2. Calvert and Rodriguez are the court’s longest-serving members, and both are viewed as potential future county judge contenders.
To Sakai, the episode was evidence that his focus on internal operations is sorely needed.
County staff at the Dec. 12 Commissioners Court meeting apologized for taking liberties on the project prioritization and assured commissioners they would consult the full court when making such changes in the future.
“There was a lack of the court being apprised of the issue, [and] obviously, there appeared to be a lack of communication between the commissioners,” Sakai said in a Dec. 13 interview at his office. “That’s an example of what we’ve got to fix.”
To Sakai’s critics, however, the incident is indicative of a court that’s lacked leadership since Wolff, a seasoned politician who served as the driving force behind many major projects, retired after roughly two decades.
Commissioners Court now includes some newcomers and some older hands, many of whom were optimistic that a new county leader would offer more opportunities for collaboration when it comes to high-impact spending priorities.
But so far, Sakai’s focus has been primarily behind the scenes, and early attempts to give commissioners more influence during this year’s county budget process were so mired in politics that county staff divided funding for capital projects equally among the precincts, rather than look for consensus on bigger goals.
Such problems are only likely to worsen as two commissioners, Rebeca Clay-Flores (Pct. 1) and Grant Moody (Pct. 3) head into contested reelection races next year and at least one commissioner appears to weigh his options when the county judge seat is on the ballot in 2026.
The bizarre Dec. 12 Commissioners Court meeting came after Calvert railed against county staff for months for not directing additional funding to projects in his precinct, even after commissioners had approved the 2024 budget.
Though that approach hasn’t won Calvert many friends at Commissioners Court, it has resonated with political allies he’s been rallying to push for bigger changes in county government — including perhaps a new leader.
In the wide-ranging interview at his office, Sakai rejected the idea politics were getting in the way of his plans.
“Obviously I’ve had a longstanding relationship with Commissioners Court with my 26 years as a district court judge … so I’m familiar with the way things have been done,” Sakai said.
He focused his first year on clawing back power from the county manager that Wolff installed when he was judge — part of the former judge’s own efforts to modernize county government at the time.
And while Sakai’s predecessor was eager to expand the county’s scope of work, he said he’s focused on improving delivery of the services the county is legally obligated to provide before moving on to bigger goals in the coming years. He recently wrapped up a listening tour with town halls in each precinct that he said will guide those next efforts.
“I knew I’d have to take it in increments,” Sakai said.
Friction with Calvert
At one point Sakai, who is the court’s newest member, and Calvert, who has represented the county’s southeast quadrant since 2014, seemed like natural allies.
Both men expressed an early desire for the court to take on a bigger role in the county’s budget process and were regular critics of County Manager David Smith, whom Sakai forced to publicly justify his position, throughout a series of meetings earlier this year.
“My overarching view is that the county manager, perhaps in the past, might have had more autonomy … [but] should be more of a chief operating officer, who executes the directives or the mandates that the Commissioners Court gives [him],” Sakai said of his vision.
That dynamic currently exists in some other major urban counties and has long been a goal for Calvert, who often butted heads with Wolff over competing ideas for the county’s major projects.
But while Sakai is still developing thoughts on the future of such projects, Calvert is among commissioners competing to push their own ideas through in the meantime, often at the expense of the collegial court Sakai hoped to run.
That tension came to a head this month with an embarrassing news cycle for the county, in which Calvert sought to pressure staff to pursue a project that started under the previous administration, and that Sakai isn’t sure is still viable. It came after months of increasingly disruptive attempts by Calvert to lobby for his priorities, even after his requests had been denied.
Leading up to the 2024 budget, commissioners each requested a list of about $10 million in capital projects for their precincts with the exception of Calvert, who requested close to $50 million. High on his list was money to construct a 37,000 square-foot advanced manufacturing training center near Brooks that was planned before COVID. It hasn’t been fully designed and has risen significantly in cost since it was first envisioned.
When commissioners approved the county’s $2.95 billion budget on Sept. 12 without money for the training center, Calvert abstained from the vote, accused Sakai of mismanaging the process, and began assembling a committee of residents to investigate the county’s spending decisions. He also hired his own media consultant with county funds to help draw attention to issues he hadn’t been able to rally support for otherwise.
Three months later, on Dec. 11 News 4 San Antonio aired a report in which Executive Director of Economic Development David Marquez said he sidelined Calvert’s training center to favor a series of smaller training centers in other locations, including one in Rodriguez’s precinct, at the request of the Texas Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education’s Alamo Chapter.
But the organization’s president, Leslie Cantu, produced emails to News 4 indicating Marquez actually wrote the request himself, then set her up to take the blame for delaying Calvert’s project. Those delays could cost taxpayers millions in rising costs for the project at Brooks, the news outlet said.
The court’s final meeting of the year ended with an apology from Marquez and a presentation in which staff sought to clear up confusion about the two projects. Meanwhile, some commissioners expressed concern that the version of events Calvert promoted was misleading and might leave observers with a distorted view of how the county does business.
Despite how the emails appeared, county staff said, the decision to advance satellite training centers was intended to get some facilities completed more quickly than the large-scale project at Brooks, not replace one project with the other.
“It was never pitched as this or that. It was ‘this is something that we can get on the ground right away’ and kind of serve as a pipeline for the larger operation,” said Rodriguez, who disputed the idea that commissioners were undercutting one another to push for their priorities.
“I don’t want to cast aspersions that this is emblematic of what’s happening over here,” he said.
Calvert declined to be interviewed for this story.
Sakai said in the interview that the court will have to decide whether it’s still worth it to pursue the Brooks training center after the bids come in for construction.
He said Calvert didn’t bring the issue of Marquez’s letter to his attention before going to the press, but he was happy to bring the important discussion out into the open.
“I want accountability,” Sakai said. “I want the county manager and all the department heads and all the employees who serve the public to be held accountable.”
Sakai said he ultimately chalked the episode up to a miscommunication between the Economic Development and Facilities Management departments, not a covert effort by staff to cancel Calvert’s project. But he issued his own apology to Cantu that day for the way things unfolded.
“I wanted to make sure that we didn’t have any type of collateral damage, so to speak, of the relationship [with private-sector partners],” Sakai said in an interview after the meeting.
‘Stressful for everyone involved’
While Sakai has displayed patience with Calvert’s maneuvering, the commissioner’s efforts are undoubtedly getting in the way of one of Sakai’s biggest goals for the court.
Turning commissioners from advisors of county staff into policymakers will require trust, communication and close coordination on their shared goals, Sakai said.
“My preference is that we would use work sessions more frequently so that we could be more strategic in our planning and communication,” he said. As of right now, he added, “I don’t have consensus of the court for that.”
As Commissioners Court meetings grew longer over the spring, Clay-Flores, who has at times struggled to make her voice heard this past year, was the first to discourage additional budget work sessions she didn’t feel would be productive for the court.
“These days are very draining — physically, emotionally, spiritually, for me,” said Clay-Flores, whom Calvert and his allies criticized repeatedly throughout the budget process. “I’d like to stick with just one day, because to add another day is stressful for everyone involved.”
Months later, Moody, who supported the additional meetings, temporarily walked out of one on Sept. 11 when Calvert’s father, community activist T.C. Calvert, compared commissioners to 9/11 terrorists during comments before the court. Moody, the court’s lone Republican, said he has since proposed moving the work sessions to a more businesslike setting where commissioners can face one another when they talk.
The elder Calvert was one of dozens of constituents Commissioner Calvert had invited to the budget work session that day to help make his case for his additional budget requests. Some of those speakers took aim at the four Democrats on the dais for a budget they said didn’t do enough to focus resources on the community’s most underserved parts.
Clay-Flores said in a November interview that her historically underserved precinct currently enjoys the largest share of the county’s capital spending because of her ability to work effectively with county staff, something she doesn’t want to get lost in politics at the dais.
Rodriguez said in a recent interview that he agrees with Calvert that dividing the money among the precincts isn’t the most effective way to govern.
“We need to make sure we are using the budget as a way to make the biggest impact in areas, both geographically and need-based, that have been neglected and are in the most need of investment,” Rodriguez said.
But so far, the court has demonstrated little ability to come together on such a plan.
“What frustrates me is we have these [work] sessions and they’re not very productive,” Rodriguez said. “I would like to see very focused [work sessions], whether they’re on the budget or an issue-based work session, because it does help to have those conversations in public.”
Turning the ship
Sakai’s peers, like Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, also have experienced drawn-out meetings while trying to increase public input to Commissioners Court, which Wolff himself once called “the weirdest government I had ever seen.”
But Sakai contends the workload should be relatively manageable for a governing body that’s historically been quite limited in its role.
Unlike Texas’ major cities, which have more flexibility to shape policy through their spending decisions and ordinances, counties are an extension of the state, and therefore roughly 90% of their budget is mandated by statute.
“I hope people realize when they look at the city and county that it’s not apples to apples,” Sakai said. “From a governance perspective … we have to be very mindful that county government really serves basic services.”
Sakai spent his first year implementing salary adjustments to make employment at the county more competitive, mediating disagreements between law enforcement and the district attorney’s office and seeking innovative solutions to move mentally ill inmates out of the jail.
While he’s embraced many new initiatives that Wolff took on before retiring, like a new county public health division that’s being funded by federal pandemic relief, Sakai said he’s looking for ways to make all county operations run leaner when they have to do without that extra money.
In the coming year, he plans to focus on changes to the county’s procurement process, which he hopes will increase transparency in how contracts are awarded. He’ll also continue reviewing the roles of key county staff leaders for potential organizational changes in the future.
“I made a commitment that I wouldn’t increase taxes, so I have to make sure the system is working as effectively and efficiently as it can,” Sakai said.
Of the structural changes he wants to make at Commissioners Court, Sakai concedes he still has work to do in changing the hearts and minds of his colleagues.
“In some respects, I’ve had to be very respectful to the county commissioners that have been there longer [than I have],” Sakai said.
Among the biggest holdouts to upending the current procedures is Clay-Flores, a close ally of Wolff who said she’s still adjusting to the new personalities and learning to work with Sakai.
“His leadership style is very different [from Wolff’s],” said Clay-Flores, who still has a large painting of the former judge hanging in her office. “I don’t know how fair it is to compare people, because people have different experiences, different strengths and weaknesses.”
Rodriguez, a former state lawmaker and San Antonio City Council member, characterized the past year as a learning experience for the new court and believes it will be better prepared to approach things differently in the coming year’s budget process.
“We’re still trying to focus on being one team,” said Rodriguez, who maintains a sizable campaign war chest despite not being up for reelection until 2026.
At a recent candidate forum hosted by the Tejano Democrats, it was clear Calvert’s ideas have taken hold in some Democratic circles. Several candidates running against Clay-Flores in the March primary said they’d attended Calvert’s budget committee meetings and echoed his concerns about the court giving county staff too much control over spending decisions.
But Sakai’s political advisor Laura Barberena said she’s not worried about voters losing faith in his leadership. After two decades of Wolff, she noted, Democrats chose Sakai, who is best known for his work overseeing the children’s court, over a field of other candidates with longer political resumes.
“They saw his integrity, and his honesty, and his commitment to families and children,” Barberena said. “People just trust him. … They know he’s not going to play political games.”
