During a work session on Thursday, the Flower Mound Town Council passed a resolution to officially oppose proposed bills moving through the Texas Legislature.
Mayor Derek France recently joined dozens of other North Texas mayors — including Dan Jaworski of Highland Village, Gerard Hudspeth of Denton and Scooter Gierisch of Roanoke — in co-authoring a recent column in the Dallas Morning News that pushed back against House Bill 2127, which they say threatens local government control. In an interview, France said he and the entire Flower Mound Town Council agreed that Austin is overreaching, and Flower Mound knows what’s best for Flower Mound.
The council added discussion and possible action on this and other bills that have been proposed in the Texas House and Senate to its work session last week, and it passed a resolution in opposition to HB 2127, according to a town news release. An accompanying letter was sent to State Senator Tan Parker and State Reps. Ben Bumgarner, Kronda Thimesch and Giovanni Capriglione, who represent parts of Flower Mound.
“Not only are we concerned with another legislative session that continues to strip control from local government,” the letter says. “But, more importantly, we are concerned with the outright dissolution, and in some cases, elimination of the voice of local citizens by the continued centralization of local power to the State and away from the thousands of town and city halls and county commissioners’ courts across Texas … We see an almost never-ending list of authorities that will be stripped away.”
To read HB 2127, visit click here.
To read the Flower Mound Town Council’s resolution and accompanying letter on HB 2127, click here.
The bill’s backers say it will combat a growing patchwork of local regulations that make it difficult for business owners to operate, the Texas Tribune reported. Thimesch said in a statement last week that the bill will “support small businesses and job creators — and that means keeping honest hard-working people from accidentally breaking a law because of wildly differing local standards.”
The Flower Mound council also directed staff to write and send a second resolution to express opposition to the following proposed House bills and their companion bills in the Senate:
- Texas House Bill 14
- Texas House Bill 866
- Texas House Bill 2925
- Texas House Bill 2789
- Texas House Bill 3921
- Texas House Bill 1489
To read the Flower Mound Town Council’s resolution and accompanying letter on the bills listed above, click here.
