Same stuff, different day...

Texas House Bill 1522 became effective on September 1, 2025. Among other things, the bill amended provisions concerning budget discussions under the Texas Open Meetings Act, specifically Section 551.043(c). A three business day notice requirement replaced the 72-hour rule for these types of discussions, and the Legislature added specific disclosure requirements when a budget is discussed or adopted:

“The notice of a meeting required to be posted under Subsection (a) at which a governmental body will discuss or adopt a budget for the governmental body must include:

(1) a physical copy of the proposed budget unless the governmental body has made the proposed budget clearly accessible on the home page of the governmental body’s Internet website; and

(2) a taxpayer impact statement showing, for the median-valued homestead property, a comparison of the property tax bill in dollars pertaining to the property for the current fiscal year to an estimate of the property tax bill in dollars for the same property for the upcoming fiscal year....

The City’s budget workshop held yesterday failed to meet these notice requirements, along with other provisions of the Open Meetings Act.

The City did not provide the proposed budget with the notice, at City Hall, or online. The purported link on the City’s website was not active.

The City did provide a taxpayer impact statement, but the values were listed as “TBD,” which is effectively meaningless (page 3 in the agenda link above). Providing the form without the actual values required by law is not sufficient, any more than it would be for any other legally required disclosure.

Imagine that you applied for a mortgage loan and the bank gave you only some of the required disclosure forms, and what it did give you had all of the relevant financial assumptions listed as TBD. Could the bank reasonably say that it had complied with the law?

No, it could not.

Section 551.043(c) requires a taxpayer impact statement “showing” the specified comparison, not merely providing a form with a related title. A document that leaves every number necessary to make that comparison as TBD does not show the comparison.

Instead, the City elected to hold the budget workshop without the information necessary to provide the required disclosures. On its own, I guess, the City simply decided it would be acceptable to just say that it did not have the information yet.

The problem is that there is nothing in the law that allows that sort of exception. The Legislature did not say, “unless you do not have the information from the appraisal district yet" or "TBD is cool."

Competent counsel would likely advise the City that Texas courts generally apply the statute as written and do not add exceptions or qualifications that the Legislature chose not to include. There is also nothing requiring the City to hold a budget workshop before it has the information necessary to comply with the law.

It's up to you how material you think this is, but at minimum, it is yet another example of the City disregarding clear open meeting requirements when those requirements do not fit its preferred agenda.

Beyond the budget notice issue, the meeting didn't comply with the public testimony requirements of Section 551.007 of the Open Meetings Act and Section 3 of the City Charter.

Section 551.007 requires that members of the public—yes, that means you and me—be allowed to address the Council before or during its consideration of a matter. The Charter likewise requires that residents be given a “reasonable opportunity to be heard at any meetings of the council on any matter.”

Simple enough, right?

However, our City Council does not seem particularly interested in structuring its meetings accordingly.

If you look at the agenda for yesterday’s budget workshop, the City specifically stated that members of the public could not address the Council until “following the conclusion of the agenda.”

In other words: “We do not want to hear from you until after we have finished considering matters.”

The final agenda item was technically adjournment. Taken literally, the notice told the public that they could not address the Council until after the meeting had been adjourned. What about this could possibly be considered "reasonable"? So, on its face, the notice didn't comply with the Open Meetings act or the City Charter.

This is not a new problem. It is actually a key claim in my lawsuit against the City.

This is the same defective structure the City used for the special meetings at which the Council approved the Letter of Intent and Chapter 380 agreements with MSB Global/SSDC1: no public comment period and a specific notice stating that the public could not address the Council until after the conclusion of the agenda—which, technically, occurred only after adjournment.

It did not comply then, and it does not comply now.

Texas courts require strict compliance with the Open Meetings Act’s notice requirements, which is relevant for both the budget notice and public comment issues here. Texas Courts have held that literal compliance is required and that “less than full disclosure is not substantial compliance.” Cox Enterprises vs Austin ISD Board of Trustees, Texas Supreme Court, 1986.

Many governmental entities handle 551.007 by placing the public comment period before they consider the substantive matters on the agenda.

It is a simple fix that, even after being sued over this issue, the Council refuses to adopt.

The point of all of this is not for me to sit here and play “gotcha.” I really have better things to do.

No, it's much more practical than that:

First, the public is entitled to the full protections, disclosures, and privileges afforded by state law and the City Charter.

Second, by failing to follow the law and its own Charter, the City runs the risk of having its actions voided or set aside by a court.

Third, because the Open Meetings Act makes certain violations subject to criminal penalties, individual council members assume a degree of personal responsibility as well. The particular notice and public testimony violations discussed here are ordinarily addressed through civil action, but the existence of criminal provisions in the Act means that compliance isn't strictly the City's concern.

The Council has also been formally apprised, through the pending lawsuit, of the recurring notice and public participation issues. Continuing to use this same defective meeting structure is difficult to interpret as an innocent misunderstanding or a problem of which City officials had no notice.

These risks of noncompliance are unnecessary. Assuming them is just not good business, and avoiding them is not particularly complicated.