Author Archives: Judith El Masri
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This blog serves as a friendly reminder that you are the government. The Texas City Attorneys Association and the Texas Municipal League, both Texas organizations crucial to the success of functioning Texas cities, provide training materials for city employees, officials and city attorneys and include this adage. Curious? You can find these materials here… Read More »
Who Won the Election?
Saturday, May 4, 2024, was the designated general uniform election date set by the Texas Secretary of State. The Texas laws that govern elections is logically called the Texas Election Code and it applies to all “general, special, and primary elections held in this state,” Election Code Sec. 1.002. Texas law dictates that in… Read More »
Texas Supreme Court Retroactive Ruling
The Texas Supreme Court rendered an opinion on a Petition for Review on Friday, March 15, 2024, and decided that a new law passed in 2023 by the Texas legislature, signed by Governor Abbott on June 9, 2023, (effective immediately) could be applied to cases already on file in Texas Courts. This was qualified… Read More »
Local Government Basics: what is a City Council Meeting Agenda and why is it in a Packet?
Local government directly affects our everyday lives. City ordinances, which are adopted in city council meetings, are the local laws that directly impact the residents of cities and towns across Texas and are created by elected officials. In Texas, state law provides the authority for smaller cities to self-govern by ordinance [1], and for… Read More »
Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)
The federal law to regulate telephone solicitations is known as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA); implemented by President Bush over 30 years ago. Any person, business, or entity that conducts telephone solicitations should comply with the TCPA; this includes voice calls, faxes, VoIP calls, and text messages. The TCPA also introduced the requirement… Read More »
Defective Subpoenas
Municipal law enforcement agencies are accustomed to receiving records requests from the public seeking accident reports and incident reports, often for insurance purposes. In addition to these frequent requests, criminal defense attorneys often attempt to obtain police incident records, body and dash camera videos, and other police records by filing and serving a subpoena… Read More »
ETJ: Extraterritorial Jurisdiction
All cities have city limit lines; you have seen road signs when you leave one city and enter another on the highway. The notion of city limits is one most are familiar with. Given the well-understood concept of city limits –what the heck is a City’s ETJ? Webster’s Dictionary defines the word extraterritorial as… Read More »
Fraudulent Filings
Following the Randle Law Office blog last week on ministerial acts, county clerks, district court clerks, and municipal court clerks normally must accept all court filings as a responsibility of their position. Accepting filings normally is not discretionary, however, municipal court administrators or clerks accepting filings are enabled by State law to analyze and… Read More »
Municipal Authority to Slow Drivers Down
In Texas, most of the side streets and residential streets in cities have a speed limit of 30 miles per hour. There is a reason for this; it is by statutory design. In my opinion though, it is not uncommon that no matter what Texas road you are driving on most of the drivers… Read More »
Film Friendly and Music Friendly Designation for Texas Communities
The Texas Film Commission’s Film Friendly Program (FFTX) trains municipal leaders about the film production process and how to generate economic development by facilitating filming requests in their community. The program started in 2007 as a certification process, and a marketing program initiated and overseen by the Texas Film Commission. The Texas Film Commission… Read More »