Editor’s Note: A correction was made regarding the Save Our Springs Alliance’s role in the lawsuit.

A district judge in Travis County overturned the Hays County Road Bond Election on June 23, for violating the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA).

The ruling by 419th District Judge Catherine Mauzy comes after four Hays County residents sued over the handling of the call for a bond election in November 2024. The bond would have allocated $439 million towards a planned 31 road projects across the county. The road bond was passed by the voters 55.76-44.24%.

Mauzy ruled in a summary judgement, meaning she ruled without a jury and without a dispute in the facts of the case, that the bond election was improperly called due to it being improperly labeled on commissioners court agendas and because members of the community were not given enough time to discuss the proposed projects.

“Because the Hays County special proposition for Proposition A road bonds on Nov. 5, 2024 was never lawfully ordered by the Hays County Commissioners Court agenda item K.2, the Court declares the election void,” Mauzy wrote in the ruling.

The ruling further enjoins the county from taking any action that is”dependent on voter approval” related to the road bond.

The lawsuit, filed by Hays County residents Les Carnes, Jim Camp, Cathy Ramsey and Gabrielle Moore was initially filed in Hays County, but was consolidated with another lawsuit which Hays County attorneys filed in the 419th Districts. According to Bill Aleshire, the attorney for the plaintiffs, Hays County’s lawsuit was filed so the county could move forward with issuing the bonds.

According to Aleshire, this was only the second time in state history that a TOMA violation was ruled as grounds to overturn an election.

“Hays County had a meeting notice in August of last year that said, call a bond election. They did not say that that bond election was only about roads which are [of] a special interest in Hays County,” Aleshire said. “It didn’t indicate how much it was, or the fact that it caused the tax increase, or the fact that there were 31 individual projects.”

In a comment under a video response to the election being overturned, Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra said the District Attorney’s Office had said the wording of the agenda item was valid.

“Our DA’s Office, which manages the agenda, assumed the wording was solid—other agencies had used the same approach. But this time, it didn’t hold up. We’re taking the hit, learning from it and turning our focus to critical public health and safety priorities,” Becerra wrote in the comment.

Both Aleshire and Carnes said Becerra and other members of the court should’ve known better, as all elected officials in Texas receive TOMA training. Aleshire worked as a legislative staffer in 1973 when TOMA was revised and served as the Travis County Judge for 12 years, meaning he is very familiar with the act.

“When you become a commissioner … you get training on what your duties of being a commissioner or county judge are, that includes this very important statute, [TOMA],” Carnes said. “The judge should have been paying more attention to all this, but he deferred to the district attorney, and now the judge is trying to point the finger at the district attorney as being the person that kind of created all this mess.”

In the video response to the election being overturned, Becerra said the county would continue to work on road projects most related to public health and safety, but could not work on all the projects covered by the bond.

“You may think ‘public health?’ Yes, there are roadways that can contain a lot of water, with mosquitos and West Nile… Public safety? Everyone gets that,” Becerra said. “We can’t have these tiny, narrow, dilapidated roads with no drop-offs and people getting hurt, or worse.”

Becerra said that he asked each commissioner to reevaluate the projects in their precincts to get a list of the most important projects related to public health and safety.

Becerra also said the county would create public committees to inform and provide feedback to the road projects. Part of the lawsuit was over the fact that no such committee had been established to guide the road bond project prior to the election.

“My office also suggested creating public committees, to engage the community and to ensure we were doing the work the Hays County residents wanted. This was successful during the POSAC bond, and unfortunately the majority on the Court refused,” Becerra wrote in the Facebook post that accompanied his video. “We shut the public out—and we’re now paying the price.”

Commissioner Walt Smith issued his own statement on Facebook after Mauzy’s ruling.

“Today is a sad day indeed for the citizens of Hays County. A TRAVIS County [District] judge chose to ignore over 100,000 of our citizens and side with Save Our Springs and nullify their votes, thus disenfranchising them and letting them know their choice didn’t matter,” Smith wrote. “Our transportation bond, backed by over 55% of Hays County residents was brought down in a court case by a special interest group from Austin on a technicality by a judge not even in our area.”

Both Carnes and Aleshire said they had initially filed the election lawsuit in Hays County, but that Hays County’s separate lawsuit related to the road bond caused a venue change.

“They combined our lawsuit with that lawsuit, and our lawsuit got transferred, not by our doing, but by Hays County’s doing, got transferred from Hays to Travis County,” Aleshire said. “Walt Smith didn’t know that, and he was out blasting the idea that there was that Travis County judge made the decision. Travis County judge made the decision because [Hays County’s] lawyers wanted it.”

Smith also said that the Save Our Springs Alliance filed the lawsuit. Save Our Springs was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Carnes instead said that it was himself and the three other plaintiffs from Hays County responsible for the lawsuit.

It remains unclear whether Hays County will attempt to appeal the ruling. According to Aleshire, commissioners court has 30 days from when the final ruling in the case was issued, which was on Friday June, 27, to vote on whether or not to appeal. The vote would occur after an executive session during a meeting of the court.