Voters have spoken before on city debt issues

While a group of taxpayers known as the "Brownsville 8" challenge the city’s authority to incur debt without voter approval, a Brownsville Herald investigation reflects that voters in 2005 soundly rejected the city’s attempt to delete the requirement of voter approval from the City Charter.

The city’s attempt was contained in two of 14 propositions to amend the charter – this city’s governing document – that the then City Commission presented to voters in a Nov. 16, 2005 election.

"You’re mixing apples and oranges," City Attorney Mark E. Sossi told the Herald Friday, regarding the 2005 charter amendment election and how two of the propositions’ failure could or could not impact the present challenge brought by the taxpayer group before a state district court.

"Certificates of obligation are a different animal entirely," Sossi said, although the city in the past has referred to the COs both as bonds and obligations.

One of the 2005 charter amendments in question was Proposition No. 4 to amend Article IV, Section 1, providing for bond issuance provisions in order to "conform" to existing state law.

Voters rejected the proposed amendment with 56.7 percent of the vote, public records show.

The proposed language of the amendment did not include the provision in the charter that, "no such bond shall be issued until the proposition shall have been submitted to the resident, qualified property taxpaying voters of the city at an election held for such purposes and a majority of the valid votes cast therein shall be in favor of the issuance of the bonds."

The other, Proposition No. 5 called for the deletion of several other sections in Article IV, regarding bond issuance that "conflict" with existing state law, including that which states that, "no time warrants shall be issued by the governing body of the city except in cases of public calamity.

(The words "time warrants" as used herein are defined as meaning that form of municipal obligation issued in the form of a bond without being submitted to the voters at an election, and shall not be construed to mean bank notes customarily used for short-time financing.)," the charter states.

Voters also rejected the city’s proposal to delete this from the charter with 61.1 percent of the vote.

These and other propositions provoked little attention in 2005. Back then, Proposition 8, which would have allowed compensation to the mayor and commissioners, caught the public’s attention. That measure also was overwhelmingly rejected with 72.9 percent of the vote.

Despite that, some members of that commission continued to receive medical and life insurance benefits not provided for in the charter.

A new Charter Review Committee was appointed in 2008 and city management presented the committee with the failed 2005 propositions for its review, but like 2005, the focus was elsewhere.

The two proposals that went to a 2009 election and were approved decreased the number of signatures required to petition for an election to recall commission members from 25 percent of registered voters to 10 percent.

A second proposition increased the number on the Brownsville Public Utilities Board from six to seven and provided for the removal of board members by the city commission.

Sossi was on the 2008 Charter Review Commission and didn’t appear to recall reviewing the 2005 failed measures regarding the issuance of bonds.

Instead, he focused Friday on the Texas Certificate of Obligation Act that says that a city may issue certificates of obligation without voter approval, regardless of any provision in a home-rule city’s charter to the contrary.

However, a recent Travis County ruling indicates that a local charter trumps state law.

In the Travis County case, Judge Scott H. Jenkins, sitting in the 419th Judicial District Court, ruled in favor of a taxpayer group called the "Friendswood 5" and against the city of Friendswood, which had argued that the Texas Certificate of Obligation Act superceded Friendswood’s charter, which also required voter approval for debt that could not be paid with present year revenues.