Austin's city manager was fired Wednesday in the wake of outrage in the Texas capital over a slow and fumbled response to a winter storm power outage that left thousands of people without electricity for a week or longer.
The vote by the Austin City Council to remove Spencer Cronk, the city's top executive, came in the face of growing calls for accountability after an ice storm this month knocked out power to more than 170,000 customers. Frustration in the nation's 11th-largest city boiled as Austin officials publicly offered little information and gave residents no estimates on how long repairs would take.
