Let me be crystal clear about something, which is that I take no pleasure at all in criticizing the fine men and women who serve on the Amarillo City Council.
I just believe the council messed up when it foisted on voters a $260 million debt obligation in the form of “anticipation notes,” despite the undeniable fact that city voters had delivered a resounding “no!” vote on a bond issue to pay for the projects sought by the council’s anticipation notes.
At issue is the Civic Center renovation. Does it need to refurbished, expanded, modernized and gussied up? Probably, yes. Had I been able to vote on the 2020 bond issue calling for the work, I likely would have supported it.
But … I also accept the verdict of a voting majority who said no to the project. Which also is why I reject the move that the council sought to pull off by passing those anticipation notes, in effect going over the voters’ heads.
I don’t need to remind anyone that in a representative democracy, the voters are the bosses, not the people who represent them.
All this is my way of endorsing a Texas Senate bill that aims to attach stricter regulations on the issuance of these kinds of financing tactics. The Senate puts a five-year minimum on cities; Amarillo sought to shove the anticipation notes down voters’ throats in two years. It prompted a lawsuit by a local businessman, who eventually won his court fight.
I want to stipulate that during my many years living in Amarillo I was generally supportive of most initiatives that came from City Hall.
Not this time.
Timing, as the saying goes, is everything. Amarillo’s council was too quick to pull the trigger on those anticipation notes. The voters of the city clearly had not forgotten the decision they delivered in rejecting the bond issue.
The result has been that the City Council has learned a tough, but necessary, lesson about the government they inherited. It is that the voters clearly deserve the last word when it comes to spending their money.