City overturns firing after lawsuit threat

COLLEGE STATION — The College Station City Council overturned the sudden firing of city manager Tom Brymer and instead allowed him to resign, The Eagle reported.

The reversal came a week after a vote for termination and followed a three-hour closed session in which council members discussed Brymer’s threat to sue if he wasn’t reinstated or given the chance to quit.

The council then apologized to the community for the controversy stemming from the surprise dismissal, which Brymer claimed was illegal because the matter hadn’t been listed on the meeting agenda.

Council members later revealed that they never asked their attorney whether it was wise to discuss firing the city manager without first having the matter posted on an agenda.

School district fails in records request

DEL RIO — The local public school district has failed to respond to an open records request filed by the Del Rio News-Herald.

San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated School District Superintendent Roberto Hernandez informed the newspaper that it was invited to inspect the records it requested in a June 3 open records request filed under the Texas Public Information Act.

The request was to review all of the envelopes that contained the mail-in ballots for the May 7, school board election.

When a reporter arrived at the school district’s administration building to begin reviewing the envelopes, he was directed to the administrative board room. Inside the board room were three white cardboard boxes. None of the requested envelopes was found in any of the white boxes.

Post paper files meeting complaint

POST — County Attorney Leslie Acker presented a response to a complaint filed by The Post Dispatch regarding an executive meeting of the Garza County Commissioners Court.

In his three-page letter, Acker said he disagreed with the newspaper’s complaint about the legality of the meeting, pointing out that the county’s engineer was needed at the meeting in consideration of a proposal by a rancher for exchange of property or contemplated litigation.

Acker also cited several attorney general opinions that allow government to include others in executive sessions when their presence is necessary to effective communication with the attorney.

The Dispatch challenged the use of the closed session to air what might be embarrassing to the commissioners court or those about whom they were discussing.

Snyder runs open government barometer

SNYDER — The Snyder Daily News runs a graphic called an open government barometer to inform local readers about public access to local entities.

The graph shows how many executive sessions local governments hold each year.

The newspaper covers eight entities and the number of secret meetings held in 2005 ranged from a high of six closed sessions at Ira school district to zero at Hermleigh school district

Tyler paper requests use of force records

TYLER — The Texas Attorney General’s Office will decide whether information in the Tyler Police Department’s internal affairs investigation into an officer accused of excessive force should be released to the public.

The Tyler Morning Telegraph submitted several open record requests to the city of Tyler and the police department after the incident. The paper is asking for the name of the officer accused of using excessive force and the names of supervising officers on the scene during the July 15 arrests of two illegal immigrants.