One of the more difficult tasks that fall to Texas municipal officials is the negotiation of contracts with police and fire unions. Widespread calls for police reform following the killing last year of George Floyd have complicated often-contentious negotiations with...
Texas Municipal Law Blog
TECQ issues boil-water notice for Texas city
Back in the day, coal miners used to carry a canary in a cage with them as they tunneled deep into the earth. The small bird functioned as a warning system. If the bird collapsed, miners knew it was time to flee before they were also overwhelmed by odorless toxic...
Tug of war over Texas online sales tax
A simple change to the sales tax sourcing rule by the Texas Comptroller will go into effect later this year. Comptroller’s Rule 3.334 will redirect sales tax revenue from online purchases. Instead of going to the seller’s place of business, the revenue will go to the...
Is access to public information being deliberately slowed in Texas?
Though Gov. Gregg Abbott has declared that Texas is 100 percent open and functioning “without any restrictions or limitations or requirements,” not everyone is convinced. Various news sources report that there has been delayed access to public records via the Texas...
Texas city to help other municipalities learn from its drought survival
It started back in 2010 and lasted five years. The extreme drought that put a dry, dusty chokehold on Wichita Falls forced a number of changes in the lives of its residents. None of the changes were harder to swallow than the switch to Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) – a...
Texas cities looking at monetizing data to generate new revenue
It’s commonplace for city governments eager to serve constituents to face funding challenges. But the extraordinary challenges presented by a year-plus of pandemic are compelling cities to look for new revenue streams to meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs. The North...
Texas municipal employees unions breathe sigh of relief
Police and firefighter unions in municipalities across the state likely breathed a sigh of relief when the Texas Court of Appeals decided in favor of the Houston Professional Firefighters Association (HPFFA). The union and city have been skirmishing over firefighters’...
Texas police reform effort dies in House
In the year since George Floyd’s death in police custody, cities, counties and states across the nation have grappled with an array of police reform proposals that sought to hold police officers accountable for misconduct. One of those efforts recently ended when a...
Texas county and petrochemical company settle lawsuit
A mid-March weekend two years ago was interrupted by a Saturday afternoon fire at Exxon Mobil’s Baytown refinery. News reports stated that the blaze was extinguished after about four hours. Details of that incident were forgotten by area residents less than 24 hours...
Tiny Texas town under the TCEQ microscope
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) says that it “strives to protect our state's public health and natural resources” in a way that allows for “sustainable economic development.” Its goals are clean air and water, it says, but environmentalists aren’t...
