It started by attending some training by Texas Carry in Hillsboro. One of the topics covered was Texas Preemption law Texas Local Government Code Sec. 229.001. This is the law that prevents a municipality from requiring you to get a million dollars liability insurance because you own a firearm. It is a statutory limitation on government.
The guy who put on the training, Terry Holcomb Sr., was integral to the passage of HB 905 which modified the State Preemption law to include knives. Before the legislation was passed and took effect on Sept. 1st 2015, a person in possession of a common pocket knife might find themselves charged with an offense for violation of a city ordinance which made a lock-blade knife illegal.
While doing some research for a different violation, I found McLennan County was violating the law by prohibiting access to the courthouse with a pocket knife.
What do you do when they are ignoring the law. The majority of people think you should just go along and do as you are told. Be reasonable.
I filed notice with the Judge, his assistant, the Sheriff and all of the commissioners.
I provided links to the statute and the House Bill.
The only response received was in reference to the pending public information act requests. No acknowledgement of the allegation they were breaking the law. Wait, one Commissioner did respond and is looking into it. He is not one of the Commissioners who is up for re-election.
On 2/16/16, Commissioners’ Court was scheduled to meet.
I filed a public information act request for the detailed agenda. It is a pretty common request and since Commissioners voted to only meet half as often, should have been simple to get me the information. Remember taxpayers got a huge bill for a new website and Commissioners said it was to make information more accessible. The detailed agenda is 490 pages and the Judge has to be compelled by law to give access to the public to this document.
I did not receive a response to my request for the detailed agenda. On 2/2/16, I went to the courthouse to follow-up on the outstanding request for public information and attend the meeting of the Commissioners’ Court.
I was denied access to a public meeting and denied access to public information. If the Legislature said they have no authority to make rules, ordinances, policies, laws related to my pocket knife, what else could it be?
Basically you have a director of Data Processing who has a 6 figure compensation package and still did not know for months back-ups were not being done. In fact, checking a little farther, the wrong information was being accessed and backed up. They are covering up a major data breech, and allocation of taxpayer funds were actually funding the breech. A private company with no contact in place accessed records they were not authorized to access. That is a data breech.
You have to wonder why it took almost two years to discover the problem. The Judge had to be forced by law to make the detailed agenda available, he had to be forced by law to make the letter from the attorney available, he had to be forced by law to make the contract available. The County Judge prohibited me from accessing the information before the public meeting and when I attempted to access the public information and the meeting, they made up some rule to deny me access.
This is from the contract:
You have to wonder who was supposed to be reviewing the monthly monitoring reports?