September 16, 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Statement from the Texas Patriots PAC.
There seems to be some confusion regarding the Texas Patriots PAC communications with two members of the Montgomery County Commissioners Court about the upcoming Road Bond.
The mobility needs of the County are so serious that members of the PAC, along with many other groups and individuals, began petitioning the Court in May, immediately after the election, to develop a better bond for November. When they failed to approve a bond by August 11, which was the last regularly scheduled meeting before the deadline to put a bond on the November ballot, we, along with all the other opposition parties, were forced to accept the reality that it was not going to happen this year, in spite of all our hard work.
We were very surprised when Mr. Davenport contacted us on August 12 to invite us to open a line of communication with Commissioners Doyal and Riley to try to establish parameters for a November 2015 bond that we could all agree upon. The opportunity was that if we could reach agreement before the August 21 meeting notice deadline, Commissioners Doyal and Riley would seek approval of the framework from Commissioners Court. Time was extremely short. Between August 12 and August 19, we worked with Mr. Davenport to formulate a mutually agreeable framework for a proposed November bond and then finalized the framework with Judge Doyal and Commissioner Riley over the course of many hours on August 20 and 21.
Beginning on August 18 we began updating key members of the coalition groups of what we were doing and soliciting their support. Throughout this process, we thought of ourselves as representatives of all the Conservative citizens groups. The framework ultimately agreed to was representative of what all the groups had been proposing since May.
We would have much preferred to have the continued input of the many people in other groups who also advocated for a better bond. Given the short timeline, however, we were able to only keep our colleagues abreast of our progress. In our enthusiasm to not miss the opportunity we did not consider the appearance of conversations and correspondence that were not public, particularly when taken out of context. At all times we continue to communicate the objectives of the large coalition of conservative citizens which had been publicly stated many times.
The Court voted yesterday on a list of projects to be funded by the November road bond should it be approved by the voters. This bond complies with the “better than the defeated May bond” goal, removing objectionable developer roads and reducing the level of maintenance expenditures, and will serve the entire county.
All private citizens have a right to petition the people they elect to serve them. Meeting with two members of Commissioners Court is not a violation of open meetings laws. Any suggestion that these meetings violated such laws is entirely without merit.
For more information, contact communications@texaspatriotspac.com