SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio City Council censured Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones during a special meeting Friday in what appears to be a first since the city charter was adopted 75 years ago.
Jones was accused of being “verbally abusive” toward Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) during a Feb. 5 confrontation about the Bonham Exchange and fire sprinkler regulations.
The censure resolution also cited ”prior inappropriate interactions with councilmembers, city staff and constituents."
The council voted 8-1 with Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9) as the lone “no” vote.
Kaur did not attend the meeting, and Jones recused herself after a brief appearance.
On its own, a censure vote is largely symbolic, publicly rebuking an elected official for their actions without actually removing any of their power.
But the resolution also calls for the mayor to take leadership training and step aside as chair of the Governance Committee for at least three months.
Despite her previous refusal to step aside from the committee, Jones said “in the interest of moving forward and focusing on the people’s work,” she would.
Jones invited the rest of the council members to take the training with her.
Had Jones not agreed to those stipulations, council members indicated they might take additional steps. Their resolution states that they may consider a vote of “no confidence,” though that would also be largely symbolic.
Few details
The mayor has acknowledged swearing and raising her voice in her encounter with Kaur, but the specifics of what happened haven’t been made public.
Kaur filed a complaint, and an independent investigation was conducted into the incident. However, council members discussed the investigation’s findings behind closed doors on Monday.
City Attorney Andy Segovia said Friday that the investigative report is considered an attorney-client privileged document, with the client being the City Council, acting on behalf of the City of San Antonio.
The report found Jones violated the city council code of conduct as well as city administrative directives on equal employment opportunity/anti-harassment and violence in the workplace.
“It found intimidation. It found proximity, posture, and threats that crossed a line,” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said of the investigation.
Jones opened Friday’s meeting with a statement before recusing herself for the rest of the meeting.
“I became passionate that morning because I firmly believe public safety is our number one responsibility. I should not have raised my voice at my colleague, and I should not have used profanity. I apologize for doing so,” she said.
Following the meeting, Kaur publicly spoke about the incident with media for the first time.
“This was, as the investigation found, an incident of workplace harassment that was unacceptable and unbecoming of our mayor,” Kaur said.
“The mayor has tried to diminish this instance by saying it was a single ‘F-bomb’ that was thrown. It is very different to use the curse word as an adjective versus to use it to continuously berate someone and intimidate them.”
Public comment
Before the vote, a handful of speakers said they were against the censure.
“If a word used during an argument between two adults cannot be absorbed without tears and such mental frustration, maybe those people should not be in leadership positions,” said Antonio Diaz.
“The people voted to give you four-year terms and a professional salary so that you could do the people’s business, not this,” said Bexar Democratic Party Chairwoman Michelle Lowe Solis, whose party endorsed Jones in the mayoral runoff last year.
Former District 1 Councilman Mario Bravo, who was censured and given a vote of no-confidence in November 2022, criticized the city’s investigation process.
“When evidence, witnesses, and testimony remain shielded from scrutiny, the public is left to wonder whether this is about justice or just more dirty politics,” he said.
A pattern
Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) was among the most forceful in her comments supporting censure. Castillo said she had been “disheartened and disturbed” with Jones’ behavior over the last nine months, and she would not have endorsed her, “knowing what I know now.”
“I want to be clear, this is not, quote, ‘about hurting someone’s feelings,’ she said, referring to Jones’ comments earlier this week. “And the gravity of this instance and censure seems to be lost on Mayor Jones. This is about conduct violating the code of conduct and administrative directives directly related to harassment and violence in the workplace. This is about a pattern of workplace violence and harassment. This behavior needed to be investigated.”
Asked about examples of the behavior afterward, McKee-Rodriguez said he had watched meetings while he was on parental leave in which council members were spoken over, laughed at, or had the mayor roll her eyes.
He also pointed to an occasion where Jones invoked Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez’s deceased mother when making a point about a Spurs stadium issue on which Jones and Meza Gonzalez were on opposing sides.
He also viewed Jones’ lack of committee chair assignments for Castillo, Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), and Marc Whyte (D10) after they forced a discussion as a form of retaliation.
“If anything happens from here that’s retaliatory, we’d be prepared to follow up. Our hope is that that is not going to be the case. We are going to move forward stronger,” he said.
8-1
Though Spears was one of five councilwomen who called for the consideration of a censure vote, she ended up as the only dissenting vote. She told KSAT she had supported moving forward with an investigation, “but when the facts were presented, it just felt like this didn’t rise ot the level of censure.”
“I also don’t agree with the investigation, and I do not feel that those findings were accurate or reflect the facts as they were presented,” she said.
The North Side councilwoman was appointed to the Governance Committee by Jones on Thursday.
Spears denied that had anything to do with her vote, though.
Spears said she had purposefully avoided talking to Kaur or Jones and had “no idea” about the appointment until the email went out.
Spears’ spokeswoman later pointed out that Jones had appointed at least three other council members to committees on Thursday or Friday morning.
KSAT requested an interview with Jones following Friday’s vote, but her spokesman said she did not have time in her schedule.
Background
With the help of Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) and Castillo, Kaur had forced a vote onto the Feb. 5 council agenda meant to give the Bonham Exchange, a historic gay bar in downtown San Antonio, more time to install a sprinkler system without cutting how many people it lets through, an issue that nearly closed the bar.
The bar was supposed to install sprinklers or reduce its occupancy to under 300 people by October 2023, following a 2018 change to the fire code.
The city signed agreements with other non-compliant bars and nightclubs to lower their occupancy while they came into compliance.
However, the club’s general manager and co-owner, Joan Duckworth, told KSAT they wouldn’t be able to keep the doors open with that number of people.
Without an agreement, the club faced being shut down at the end of January, but that was put on hold until after the council could vote on an extension.
But in a twist, Duckworth signed an agreement with the city before the vote could happen. The deal reduced operations to one floor and lowered its capacity from 686 to 299, then to 343, as a sprinkler system is installed.
One of her attorneys, Javier Guerra, told KSAT that the mayor had called Duckworth the night before the vote and “put a lot of pressure on Joan.”
On the day of the vote, Guerra said, they met with the mayor’s people and agreed to limit the capacity because the mayor promised to raise the money for the $550,000 sprinkler system.
The signed deal made the extension vote moot, and the council did not vote on it.
Recent Censures
Council members do not have the power to remove another member from office, barring criminal convictions involving “moral turpitude,” though voters can petition for a recall election.
Still, four council members have faced censure or a vote of no confidence in the past four years with varying repercussions.
Then-District 1 Councilman Mario Bravo was censured and given a vote of no confidence in November 2022 after an angry confrontation with then-District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval, his former romantic partner.
Bravo lost his reelection bid to Kaur seven months later.
A few days after Bravo’s censure, then-District 10 Councilman Clayton Perry was handed his own vote of no confidence following a drunken hit-and-run crash. His council colleagues, however, scrapped a call for his resignation.
Perry ultimately pleaded “no contest” to misdemeanor charges for driving while intoxicated (DWI) and failure to stop and provide information. He did not seek a fourth and final term.
Current District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte urged his council colleagues to censure him in January 2024 following his DWI arrest, which they did.
He eventually pleaded “no contest” to a non-DWI charge, obstruction of a highway, and was reelected to a second term in May 2025.
District 8 Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez was censured in September 2025 following her own DWI arrest.
Meza Gonzalez pleaded “no contest” to a non-DWI charge and obstruction of a highway on Jan. 27.
City staff reviewed records since the city charter was adopted in 1951 and found a handful of other censure votes. Only one appeared to be aimed at a mayor, though.
Mayor Walter McAllister faced censure in 1970 for comments he made to an NBC journalist, including about Mexican-Americans’ motivation. McAllister claimed his interview had been “misrepresented and distorted,” and the motion ultimately failed.
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