Three council members join governor's war against Texas cities

 Gov. Gregg Abbott and his Republican cohorts in the legislature don’t like cities. Why? Because that’s where Democrats live and in order to remain in power, Abbott and his merry band of reactionaries need to silence the voice and reduce the influence of those living in Texas’ metropolitan areas. Now it appears that three members of our own city council — Dex Ellison, Yvonne Flores-Cale and Michael Tobias — are joining Abbott’s crusade to neuter cities.

Abbott has championed and the legislature has approved capping property tax rates cities can collect, but not doing the same thing for any other taxing entity that collects property tax. They have also prohibited cities from enacting ordinances to protect their environment as well as voting restrictions that only effect metropolitan areas. He tried hard, but so far has failed, to prohibit cities from passing laws that prohibit texting while driving, or to enact ordinances protecting LGBTQ residents. Abbott even wants to prohibit cities from enacting tree ordinances simply because the city of Austin once prohibited him from chopping down a heritage tree on property he purchased unless he replaced it with three other trees. Yes, this proposal Abbott wanted the legislature to pass was a personal vendetta.

Here’s what the Houston Chronicle, in an article referring to the governor as “Comrade Abbott,” recently wrote:

“Gone are the days when the Republican Party of Texas could be counted on to defend local control. No longer do Texas conservatives believe that government closest to the people is the best kind of government. Instead we’ve witnessed the emergence of a political movement dedicated to stealing power away from local voters and moving it to Austin, where big money donors have created a one-stop shop to get what they want out of government.”

And there was this from the Texas Municipal League:

“From proposed revenue caps, to spending caps, to tree ordinances, to texting while driving, and more, no one has ever proposed such sweeping restrictions on local voters having a voice in shaping the character of their communities. Seventy-four percent of Texans live in our 1,215 towns and cities and the decisions they have made at the local level have put Texas cities at the top of the nation in success. Stifling their voices through an all-powerful, overreaching state government is a recipe for disaster.”

Abbott admits to leading this war against cities. “For us to be able to continue our legacy of economic freedom, it was necessary that we begin to speak up and to propose laws to limit the ability of cities to California-ize the great state of Texas,” said Abbott at an event with the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute back in 2017.

He went so far as to tell this group that Texas  should issue a “ban across the board” on municipal regulations.

“One strategy would be for the state of Texas to take a ‘rifle shot after rifle shot after rifle shot’ approach to try to override all these local regulations,” Abbott explained to the conservative audience. “I think it would be far simpler, and frankly easier for those of you who have to run your lives and your businesses on a daily basis, if the state of Texas adopted an overriding policy to create certain standards that must be met.” 

Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League, said one way Abbott and his cohorts could create these standards is by having the state strip all 352 home-rule cities like Kyle, which are free to enact regulations as long as they don’t expressly conflict with state law, of their home-rule powers. They would then be treated as general-rule cities, which are usually small and can regulate only areas the state specifically gives them permission to oversee. The Texas constitution specifies that home-rule cities can't pass ordinances that contradict state law, which legal experts say means cities wouldn't have much recourse if Texas decided to preempt their powers.

Sandlin has naturally been an outspoken opponent of Abbott’s attacks on municipalities. He says this hostility toward cities and local control didn’t exist at the Texas Capitol before Abbott became governor.

“It’s only been since 2015 that we’ve seen this new tactic, where local control is no longer a good thing, it’s actually an evil thing," says Sandlin. "The new good thing is now liberty from local regulations."

Abbott & Friends’ big push against municipal governments of late is to prohibit them from lobbying at the state level. And Ellison, Flores-Cale and Tobias are fine with that. They, too, seem to think cities should not have a voice when decisions are being made, laws are being passed, under the capitol dome that directly affect Kyle and other cities. The reason I say that is because those three voted to remove funding for a state lobbyist that was in the city’s budget that was finally passed last night, a move that thankfully failed on a 4-3 roll-call vote.

Why did they vote against this funding? As Flores-Cale explained, it is because the current special session of the legislature is once again considering bills, as part of Abbott’s war on cities, that, if passed, would prohibit cities from such lobbying efforts. But it makes absolutely no sense to stop your ability to persuade unless you absolutely have to. That’s tantamount to the soldier saying “There’s a chance I might be killed in this battle, so I’m going to commit suicide right now.”

In fact, what these council members and the rest of the council should be doing is investigating forming or joining a coalition of other municipalities to mount legal challenges to this law and other statutes limiting municipal government effectiveness and control. 

Don’t meekly surrender, as Ellison, Flores-Cale and Tobias seem to want to do. Fight back! Fight to protect local control of city governments. Don’t surrender that authority to the state.