Bastrop, Texas Events, News & Stories

Bastrop, Tx–The city council named a citzen task force Feb. 22 to advise them about toughening Bastrop’s ethics rules and what such changes might look like. The issue has been a topic of some controversy among council members since last year.

At one point the council decided it might not be the best group to decide on changes and agreed to seek an independent citizen group. Any new rules presumably would apply both to the council and to members of the city’s other boards, commissions and similar bodies.

The six-member panel includes a judge, a police officer, a businessman, a counselor and two members of the local clergy.Their charge is to tell the council if additional ethics rules are needed and, if so, what those might be.

Task force members include insurance agent Gilbert Solis, 423rd District Court Judge Chris Duggan, counselor Linda Seal, police officer Wuthipong Tantaksinanuki, along with Rev. R.D. Smith and Rev. Lisa Hines. Smith is pastor of Mt. Rose Missionary Baptist Church and Hines is rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, both in Bastrop.

Members were recommended by Council Members Julie Hart and Ken Kesselus, appointed by Mayor Terry Orr and confirmed by a unanimous council vote.

The task force will be advised by city attorney J.C. Brown and City Manager Mike Talbot. It will also organize itself and report back to the council later this year.

Bastrop, Tx–The city council agreed earlier this month to select a citizen panel to advice them about whether and perhaps in what way to reinforce the ethics rules which govern council members as well as those who serve on official city boards, commissions and similar bodies.

A move last year by Council Member Julie Hart for the council itself to draft and consider additional rules met resistance among other council members who suggested they might not be in an unbiased position to propose rules to govern themselves.

Apart from state law, Bastrop apparently has no special ethics regulations, as many cities do.

The council decision to create an ethics advisory group also included two charges for the panel. First will be to decide if additional city rules are needed. If the answer is yes, the group will be asked to draft proposals for council consideration.

Hart has argued that Bastrop needs more specific rules to prevent or curtail a number of potential conflicts of interest , not addressed by state law, in conducting the city’s public business. Others, including Council Member Joe Beal, have suggested that detailed regulations may prove troublesome to follow and enforce and have little effect in the end on making sound public policy and decisions.

The topic could come up again as early as the Feb. 22 council meeting.

Bastrop, Tx–Prodded by Council Member Julie Hart, the city council is expected to take up possible new ethics rules soon after the 2010-11 city budget is finalized, a move expected Sept. 28.

For much of this year Hart has been openly–and sometimes sharply–critical of individual council members as well as some appointed members of city boards and commissions.

Earlier this month, for instance, Hart accused Council Member Joe Beal of having a conflict of interest when he voiced objection to a pending resolution opposing a plan to pipe large volumes of groundwater from Bastrop County to a point near San Marcos. A principal partner in the pipeline plan is former Williamson County Commissioner Frankie Limmer, and Beal is an investor in another Limmer business which builds funeral parlors, including one in Bastrop.

Beal rejected the conflict charge, saying he was an investor only in the funeral home venture.

The council adopted the proposed resolution on a 3-1 vote with Beal voting no. Council Member Kay Garcia McAnally did not attend that meeting.

During the summer Hart once called on Beal, Council Member Ken Kesselus and Mayor Terry Orr to recuse themselves from discussion and voting on an issue involving both the Bastrop County Historical Society’s Old Town Visitor Center and Calvary Episcopal Church. Orr, Kesselus and Beal are all members of both organizations and should refrain from joining the discussion, she said.

In that case no council decision was required after the issue was referred to City Manager Mike Talbot for negotiation which resulted in the visitor center maintaining its presence in the Old First National Bank Building instead of moving next door into space owned by the church.

A separate controversy beginning earlier this year is perhaps less openly linked to Hart’s ethics campaign, but she has made her views plain from time to time concerning alleged conflicts of interest involving two veteran members of the city’s Historic Landmark Commission (HLC), long time chairman Bill Ennis and a business associate, Dan Hays-Clark.

Both had served on the commission for a dozen years until Ennis declined to be reappointed to a new term this summer and Hays-Clark resigned last month, citing the ongoing controversies as demanding too much city staff time and expense.

This issue first surfaced in early summer when Mayor Orr put the name of Hays-Clark forward for reappointment to the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment in addition to his seat on the Landmark Commission. Hart argued that a section of the city code bans, except for some defined situations, a resident serving on more than one city board or advisory panel at the same time.

Orr argued that Hays-Clark had been confirmed by previous council action to sit on both boards at once, and–barring new considerations–there was no legal reason to reject reappointment. On a 4-1 vote the council confirmed the reappointment. Council Member McAnally voted for the reappointment but said she would oppose Hays-Clark for reappointment to a seat on the Landmark Commission when his term expired next year.

By his own account, this debate drew the attention of Bastrop resident G.A. Lewis, a frequent city critic, who began a review of city records evidently with an eye toward possible conflicts of interest in the actions of Ennis and Hays-Clark in their private business activities as well as members of the Landmark Commission and related bodies. As a result on July 7 Lewis posed 20-odd questions to city attorney J.C Brown which arose from his inquiries.

Brown’s 10-page response is dated Aug. 11. In some cases, concerns raised by Lewis are clearly allowed by state law, she said. In a few cases, the city should have followed different procedures in dealing with issues involving Ennis and/or Hays-Clark and their private business interests, she said.

Her most common response was that the questions at issue are matters of city policy and rules which can only be answered by council action. Subsequently Lewis reviewed some of those issues in public at a regular council meeting.

At that time Hart said the Lewis concerns point to situations which “don’t pass the smell test.”

Orr told Lewis the council will review the issues he raised.