For The Record

County Judge Andy Eads was away on county business. County Commissioner Precinct 3 Bobbie J. Mitchell presided. Every dollar figure on this agenda got read into the record, which is the fix I've asked for since January 6.

Then the part that keeps not getting fixed.

One number never got said out loud: a five year tax abatement worth up to $300,000. That's the third tax deal in a row to pass with its terms unspoken.

Three Auditor's certificates in 390 pages. All three blank. The largest new contract on the agenda, $2,058,938.60 to a construction company, doesn't carry one at all. Fourth meeting running.

And the Court approved $549,752 on a road engineering contract when its own memos say $549,742, and only $549,742 adds up to the total it voted for.

Signed in July 1999 at $759,929. Amended in 2009, 2016, 2018, 2021, and now. After Tuesday it stands at $10,621,795.60. That's 26 years and 7 months, and roughly 14 times the original, for a stretch of road between I-35W and I-35E.

The 2021 amendment alone took it from $4,423,103.60 to $10,072,053.60. The packet recites every other supplement's amount. It doesn't state that one's.

Nobody asked about any of it. Motion, second, carried.

Then the part that wasn't on the agenda at all. STV Incorporated bought the engineering firm in 2021 and merged it in on August 18, 2025, six months before this meeting. The memo in the packet, written on Innovative Transportation Solutions letterhead by a private consultant, asks the Court to “acknowledged and approved” the reassignment of the contract. The agenda posted no reassignment, just the old firm's name in a parenthetical.

The Court approved handing a contract worth more than $10,000,000 to a different legal entity, and the public was never told that was on the table.

Before a sixth supplement, the Court gets a written history of the first five. And you post what you're actually approving.

The one item where the county gave revenue up got a motion, a second and an aye.

Item 13.A approved a Chapter 312 abatement with Stellar Energy Americas. Nobody said what the company does, what it builds, or what the county gives up.

The packet says the county exempts part of the new value on a sliding scale for five years, capped at $300,000, against $79,500,000 invested and a $78,000 average salary.

That may be a good deal. I'd probably vote for it. And none of it was secret. Fort Worth's staff recommendation on its half of this deal is dated February 10, 2026, and a copy of it sits in this Court's own packet at page 234. Stellar Energy builds cooling for hyperscale data centers, and Fort Worth's deal requires 1,420 jobs. A resident could find that. Just not from this Court.

Third tax deal in a row to pass this way. MP 10X in January, a Chapter 381 amendment on February 10, now this.

This Court knows how. It gave a Pilot Point development the full public case 20 minutes before it gave MP 10X nothing.

It's a control. Somebody outside the department doing the spending confirms in writing that the money is there, before the Court votes.

There are three of them in this 390 page packet. All three are blank. Nobody filled in an amount and nobody signed. On one, the Auditor's name isn't even printed.

Then there's the biggest new contract on the agenda. $2,058,938.60 to a construction company for work at FM 407 and I-35W. That item's paperwork is complete and readable: the contract, three bonds, the insurance certificate, the surety's power of attorney. There is no Auditor's certificate in it at all.

Three more money items carry none either. Their pages are scans with no searchable text, so I had the images read rather than guess. One of those is the $10,621,795.60 item.

Fourth meeting running. January 13, January 29, February 3, and now.

Fill it in and sign it, or the item doesn't reach the agenda.

This one asked for wisdom "in these coming weeks and months, as we go through elections and as we establish your will," and closed by thanking God for Jesus.

Early voting was already running.

So a government meeting opened by asking God to establish His will through an election residents were casting ballots in that week. Second time in three meetings the prayer has reached into an election. February 10's asked that "who you have called to these positions has favor."

Six times running, and nobody on that dais has stopped to ask whether it should happen. That's what a habit does. It stops sounding like a choice.

It is one. Somebody decides what happens in that first minute, every single meeting, and six times straight the decision has been the same.

I'd open with a moment of silence. Pray in it if you want. Nobody has to know what you're saying, and nobody gets left standing outside their own county government to wait it out.

That's the first time this year. It isn't restraint, there was simply nothing on the agenda to take behind the door. Worth saying only because the last five meetings had something.

What wasn't standard: before calling the vote, the Chair read all four out loud, with the dollar amount and the reason on the one that carried money. Four earlier meetings this year took the vote before the reading. This one didn't.

Now the part that didn't change. Item 2.A is titled "Order Making Appointments." The packet contains no appointments. Three pages, and they are a placement form, the agenda wording repeated, and a blank court order. No name, no position, no term. Three earlier meetings this year got the same empty item.

The public only learned who got appointed because Commissioner Mitchell said the name and the job out loud from the dais. She didn't have to. Nothing in the packet made her.

That's the whole problem sitting in one item. Residents got the information because of who was holding the gavel, not because the county has a rule that puts it in front of them.

$2,058,938.60 to a construction company for intersection work at FM 407 and I-35W, out of Judge Discretionary. $142,500 more for traffic signal design at SH 114 and Championship Parkway, out of Precinct 4 Discretionary. I have no quarrel with the roads.

I have a quarrel with the accounts.

After the traffic signal vote, Commissioner Mitchell said out loud, "the judge is gone so we're spending his money." On the construction contract, County Commissioner Precinct 4 Dianne Edmondson opened with "thank you so much judge for that extra money."

They were joking. That's what makes it useful. Nobody on that dais thinks of that account as the county's. They think of it as his, and they said so with the microphones on.

I went looking for what the Judge's account is. The only description of it anywhere in the county's packets this year sits in the 696 page January 29 packet, inside a City of Denton ordinance, printed as a scanned image: the County Judge "has been allocated Twenty Five Million and 00/100 Dollars ($25,000,000.00) in TRIP 2022 funds."

$25,000,000 of public money, and the county has never explained it in a document of its own.

Publish it. What's in it, what's left, what it bought.

He said legal residents in this county are scared to drive to the grocery store. He said he doesn't want local officers acting as federal agents. And he made a specific factual claim: that the Sheriff is now eligible for a $140,000 grant for participating. The program is the Texas Comptroller's SB 8 Sheriff Immigration Law Enforcement Grant, which is state money, not federal.

I can't confirm that figure and I'm not repeating it as fact. Nobody up there addressed it.

Commissioner Mitchell told him the Court can't discuss an item that isn't on the agenda. She's right about that, and I'd have said the same thing.

But the same law that stops them from debating it lets any member say, put it on the next agenda. One sentence, no vote. Instead he got pointed at the Sheriff standing in the back of the room.

That's a private conversation instead of a public answer. Six weeks after this Court committed county deputies to federal immigration work, there's still no public accounting of what it costs or what it brings in.

Put it on an agenda.

No list of bills. No total. No payees. Not one dollar figure anywhere in the item.

County Auditor Jeff May said what he always says: "I have no changes today. Recommend approval as presented." He has the report in front of him and he's doing his job.

Nobody outside that room can. I pulled the first four packets of the year for the February 3 brief. Same three pages every time. February 10 made five. This is the sixth.

Item 8.A is the Human Resources report on hiring actions by elected officials. Same three pages. No report. The HR director read the numbers aloud from the podium, which is the only reason anybody heard them.

Item 2.A, the appointments order, same three pages, no appointments.

The bills are real and the hires are real. But a public record that says "approved" with nothing behind it isn't a public record. It's a receipt for a transaction nobody can inspect.

If the document isn't attached, the item comes off the agenda until it is.

He hesitated. "You would like my address?"

"Yes, sir."

So he read out the street and the number where he lives, and it went into the permanent record and onto the county's video. I'm not printing it here, and it's redacted from the transcript on this page.

I went back through every Commissioners Court transcript from this year. Every member of the public who stepped up to that microphone. A conservation advocate, the Sheriff, a Meals on Wheels director, a landowner, poll workers, an election judge. Not one of them was asked for a home address. Most gave a city or nothing, and nobody stopped them.

One person read his address into the record, and he's the one who came to say people in this county are afraid.

I don't think it was aimed at him. It reads like an old habit, not a trap.

It's still wrong. A name and a city identifies a speaker fine. Stop making residents publish where they sleep to talk to their county government.

It had been pulled. The Chair had it on her sheet and hadn't told anybody. County Commissioner Precinct 2 Kevin Falconer: "we were going to pull that. I did have a question on it."

No reason was ever given, and the question never got asked.

12.A was four training reimbursement agreements with people the county paid to put through peace officer certification. Small money, probably routine. That isn't the point. On January 29 this Court pulled a $4,000,000 road item with five words and no explanation. Same move, smaller number.

One more thing. The memo supporting 12.A is dated February 25. The meeting was February 24.

When an item comes off, say why on the record.

So you can read both deals side by side. I did.

Fort Worth abates up to 60% of its new city taxes for 10 years. Ours runs five years and caps at $300,000. And Fort Worth charged for it. The company has to spend at least 30% of its construction costs, hard and soft, with certified small businesses. Miss that, and Fort Worth cuts the abatement by 10%.

Now read the definition of a small business in that clause. It counts companies in Tarrant, Wise, Johnson, Parker, and Denton County.

Fort Worth negotiated work for Denton County contractors. Denton County's own agreement takes a different route, and nobody explained that either. Section 4.3, on page 199, requires that at least 25% of the company's employees be Denton County residents throughout the term, audited annually. On the job numbers in this agreement that is a floor of 355 residents. It is in the packet. It was never said out loud, and neither was the difference between the two approaches.

Our agreement is not empty. It requires $79,500,000 invested, a floor on taxable value, and a $78,000 average salary, with recapture if the company misses. Those are real terms.

None of them puts a dollar in the hand of a business here.

Fort Worth wrote that clause into a document in our own packet. Copy it.

The county covered it by moving money out of three other sheriff accounts: $619,000 from Operations, $238,800 from Communications, $43,638 from Administration. Not new money. The Sheriff's own budget, shuffled.

None of that should surprise this Court. In January it moved $291,557 for jail overtime, and the only written explanation sat on a page printed upside down in the packet: "Our staff are still working 12-hour days due to the staff shortage. We are at 74% staffing while our daily inmate population continues to increase."

Different fiscal year, same condition. FY2025 closed $901,438 over on jail salaries. FY2026 opened with overtime the Court moved outside its own budget policy.

Nobody said a word. Motion, second, carried.

Minutes later the budget officer opened the FY2027 process and named workforce investment a priority of this Court. Good. Then show it. A jail that cannot staff itself doesn't get fixed in a year end cleanup line. It gets fixed in the budget, out loud, where residents can see what it costs.

The county's system logs who approved what. On this one, the same employee approved it six separate times, in six separate control roles: buyer manager, accounting configurator, budget amendment review, spend category approver, sponsored programs manager, and finance executive. First approval at 11:01:43. Last at 11:38:03. 36 minutes and 20 seconds, one set of eyes.

Those roles exist to be different people. That's the entire reason a system has six of them.

The county knows it, too. A smaller amendment on the same agenda, $18,325 for a printer, ran through four different employees at four different stages. The controls work. They just didn't run on the biggest item.

One more thing on the same page. The final internal approval on the $1,946,915 was still marked "Awaiting Action" when the packet went out. The three smaller amendments all show that step finished before they reached the Court.

All of it is printed in the packet. Nobody asked.

The fix is that no single employee clears more than one control role on the same document.

Both can't be true. March 3 is election day.

Then she gave the hours. Polls open 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Commissioner Edmondson corrected her on the record. Seven at night, not one in the afternoon. She was right, and she's the only reason the correct hours got said out loud.

That's six hours of a voting day, announced wrong, by the person running the meeting, on the county's own broadcast, while people were already casting ballots.

Two weeks earlier this Court did the opposite. The Elections Administrator stood in that same room and explained that Republican and Democratic election day sites are not the same, 78 and 68 locations, and told people to check before heading out. I credited it then and I'll credit it again.

The difference is one came from the person whose job it is, and one came off the top of somebody's head.

Election information gets read from a card the Elections office writes. Nobody freelances the hours.

At the end of the meeting she said this, and I'm quoting: "I want to remind the public that this is a campaign election season." Then: "Denton County is not a cartel. We are not corrupt. We do not have a slush fund. And we do not give special attention or money to anybody."

Nobody in that room said any of those things. No speaker, no member, no item. She raised the accusations herself so she could answer them.

Then: "Your Denton County Commissioners Court is doing a great job as far as I'm concerned." A colleague said "amen."

Both of those were off the agenda. One got shut down. The other ran to the gavel.

If the rule is that this Court doesn't discuss what isn't posted, the rule applies to the people holding the microphone. If a Commissioner wants to campaign, there are venues for it. This isn't one.