City Council

The Austin City Council so far has authorized spending $399,000 to hire outside attorneys to provide advice to bring the city into compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act and to defend a lawsuit filed by The Austin Bulldog under the Texas Public Information Act.

More than half that amount has been spent already, most of it to deal with the ongoing investigation of possible criminal violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act by Travis County District Attorney David Escamilla.

Section 551.143 of the Texas Open Meetings Act states that a member or group of members of a governmental body commits an offense if the member or group of members knowingly conspire to circumvent this chapter by meeting in numbers less than a quorum for the purpose of secret deliberations in violation of this chapter. An offense, if proven, is punishable by a fine of $100 to $500 and confinement in the county jail for one to six months, or both the fine and confinement.

The Austin City Council’s possible violations of Section 551.143 were exposed by The Austin Bulldog’s investigative report published January 25. That same day The Austin Bulldog reported that Escamilla was investigating these matters. That investigation is still ongoing.

The city’s response to these reports was swift. On January 28, the city council hired three law firms and huddled with their lawyers for two and a half hours in a closed-door executive session.

The practice of scheduled private meetings was immediately stopped. The Austin City Council held its first public work session February 9.

The investigative report exposed the longstanding practice of the mayor and council members holding a flurry of routinely scheduled private meetings that for many years had been taking place a day or two before every council meeting. These private meetings denied public access to significant deliberations about city business that are required to be conducted in the sunshine of open meetings.

The Austin Bulldog reported February 7 that the City of Austin committed $159,000 to engage three law firms to provide legal advice related to Texas Open Meetings Act: James E. “Jim” Cousar of Thompson & Knight LLP, C. Robert “Bob” Heath of Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta LLP, and Randy T. Leavitt of the Law Office of Randy T. Leavitt.

Since then, City Attorney Karen Kennard has issued amendments that allowed other lawyers and support personnel within the three law firms to assist, and increased the total authorized expenditures to $289,000 solely to address Texas Open Meetings Act issues.

City Council Members Chris Riley and Randi Shade may have violated the Austin City Code by not reporting the financial activity of their domestic partners.

Many financial statements filed by the mayor and other council members are incomplete or erroneous, and one annual statement is missing.

Perhaps a larger problem is that neither these elected officials (with some exceptions) nor the city staff is paying sufficient attention to ensure that these important statements are accurately prepared to fully comply with state law and the City Code. The penalties that apply to the more serious violations are not being enforced. And citizens are kept in the dark because few are aware these documents exist or where to find them.

These problems were discovered during The Austin Bulldog’s broader investigation aimed at bringing greater transparency to city government by giving citizens the tools to monitor the conduct of their elected officials.

Do Austin’s mayor and council members have conflicts of interest in the decisions they make? How would you ever know?

Aside from the fact that these officials are required to withdraw from even discussing something in which they have a substantial interest, the public is entitled to be informed of their financial interests so they can observe and monitor how these officials conduct themselves.

System lacks transparency