Those that never made it out of committee are largely dead, though conceivably some could be brought back as amendments to other bills. We're now at an inflection point in the Texas legislative process: Bills that are out of committee and moving at this point are still "alive" and could possibly pass. If it was okay to change the rules post hoc in 2005, Chairwoman Thompson should be able to do it now. The provisions they’re saying the law would change were not in place when voters adopted Chapter 143 of the Local Government Code, but were added many decades afterward at the unions’ behest. Texas cities mostly adopted civil service in the 1940s and 1950s. CLEAT claims the law would offend “the vote of the people who adopted civil service in the first place.” Certainly no government employee union should have veto power over accountability reforms affecting their profession.ģ. That should be left to local policy and state law. It’s inappropriate to limit police discipline through union negotiations. If unions won’t sign off on a police contract, its provisions cannot take effect. The main thing that currently limits cities’ discretion to strengthen disciplinary processes is that, if the only way to do it is through local meet and confer agreements, the unions will never agree. CLEAT argues that HB 829 would “severely limit the discretion of cities to negotiate these issues with their officers back home.” While the police chiefs association has suggested getting rid of arbitration altogether, Chairwoman Thompson’s bill keeps arbitration and simply provides arbitrators more guidance.Ģ. HB 829 is a moderate effort to resolve this problem, giving officers, departments, and the public greater certainty about which punishments are reasonable.
Police chiefs need authority to fire officers under such circumstances. Notoriously, one San Antonio officer was reinstated after being fired for feeding feces between two pieces of bread to a homeless person. In San Antonio, 70% of fired officers are reinstated. In Fort Worth, about half of fired officers get back on the force.
Since that time, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to observe how those 2005 revisions played out in the real world. It’s true the Legislature has not revisited the police civil-service statute for many years. CLEAT argues that Texas’ police civil service statute has not been changed since 2005 and decisions about departmental discipline have been left to local union negotiations, which they prefer.
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