The House Is Betting You Won’t Notice
The Editor is right that the answers hide in the boring parts. Here is one more boring part. Public notices & Agendas.
I have told you that before and I will keep telling you every time they come up.
State law does not treat those notices as decoration. It treats them as conditions. Miss a deadline, shortchange a posting requirement, skip a notice entirely, and the decision made behind that defect can be voidable. Not embarrassing. Voidable. Legal defects are how tax rates get challenged, how decisions get unwound, and how a county ends up paying lawyers instead of improving roads, water systems, and schools.
And it is not just the notice. The agenda counts too. Texas courts have held that an agenda item must tell the public what is going to be discussed, and the more the public cares about a subject, the more specific that wording has to be. A vague agenda item is a defective notice. A defective notice could make the action taken under it voidable. Same rule. Same consequence. Consider this your FYI.
Every governmental official who calls us troublemakers or fake news is quietly betting that nobody reads the fine print, and that nobody who does has the means or the motivation to act on it.
But not everyone is making that bet.
Caleb White at the Fisher County Hospital District does his research. He checks the requirements. He makes sure the notices go out correctly, not because someone is standing over him with a statute book or I am calling him about it, but because he cares about the place he works and understands that properly notifying citizens is part of the job, not an obstacle to it. He is open to conversations and questions and knows that an email from this newspaper is not an ambush. Though, to be honest I have never had to call him about a non-compliant notice or agenda. But I have emailed him more than once to thank him for his work when it comes to public notices and agenda wording.
I salute him and Leanne Martinez and everything they do for this hospital district and the communities it serves. Next time you see them, give them a high five for the amazing work they are doing behind the scenes, because they are rocking it.
Actually, while I am saluting people, I will mention a few others who know that when we call or email or come by with a question or concern about public notices and agendas, is because we care, not because we are stirring up trouble to sell newspapers, though some others prefer to call us a tabloid and they are not referring to the size of the newspaper.
Lacy English, Stonewall County Tax Collector. Ronnie Moorhead, Stonewall County Judge. The late Riley Branch, former Stonewall County Attorney. Lorenzo Calamaco, Aspermont City Administrator. LaTisha Martin, secretary to the Stonewall County Judge and County Judge-elect. The Stonewall County Commissioners, all of them, and I mean all of them. Anya Mullin, Stonewall County Treasurer. Holly McLaury, Stonewall County Clerk.
Zach Morris, Aspermont ISD Superintendent.
Jimmie Bennett, Roby CISD Superintendent.
Joy Dennis, secretary to the Fisher County Judge. And Jeanna Parks, Fisher County Treasurer, who gets public information requests back to us promptly and in the proper format, which is what the law requires, and then takes the time to answer our questions about what we are looking at, even if it is contraversial. These are people off the top of my mind at the moment. Because we are not out to get anyone. We care about taxpayers, and we care about the taxing entities too. Most of the time we are trying to keep everybody out of hot water before the water gets hot. We tend to see the writing on the wall before the people inside the closed doors-always in a meeting- bubbles remember that the citizens funding their paychecks are allowed to ask questions or address concerns.
It is doubtful that the phrase “it has always been done this way” will hold up in court if a Texas Statute says otherwise.
And it gets easier every year to double check anything. Let that sink it a minute.
We pay attention to the laws and to what the Legislature changes. We might not catch everything. When we do catch something, we try to help before the fact rather than report on it after.
So, for everyone still betting on nobody noticing, understand what the bet requires. One taxpayer. One attorney. One notice that never ran or one vague agenda item. If you think nobody has ever counted those things on one hand, I have some oceanfront property in Roby to sell to you.