The decision
FACT: On June 18, 2026, in a special called session, the council took up “reimbursement of legal fees to Council Member Robert Fitzgerald in the pending cause brought against him and the City by Michael Bachand” — the lawsuit contesting the Place 4 election Fitzgerald won by 2 votes. The vote tied 2–2, with Council Members Turner and Griffith opposed and Fitzgerald recused. Mayor L. Kelly Jones cast the tie-breaking vote in favor. It passed 3–2. That’s from the official minutes; our notes from that night.
FACT: Residents didn’t get a plain-words heads-up. The agenda item read “legal representation of a council member in pending civil litigation” — nothing about an election contest or whose fees. Nine days earlier, an attempt to even discuss the item ended when a council member’s walkout broke quorum.
What the Attorney General has said
FACT: The Texas Attorney General has addressed exactly this question. JM-685 (1987): a governmental body may spend public funds to defend its own interests, but “may not do so to represent the purely personal interests” of an individual official, and has “no authority” to pay an official’s legal expenses in defending an election contest — a board that already paid may seek reimbursement from the official. DM-431 (1997): a government “will always be precluded” from paying an official’s attorney’s fees in an election contest — “as a matter of law.” A third opinion, GA-0104 (2003), took up reimbursing a trustee’s legal expenses arising from an election contest.
FACT: To be fair to the whole picture: Bachand’s suit names both Fitzgerald and the City, and a city paying to defend itself is a different question from a city paying an official’s personal defense. But the motion, as the minutes record it, was reimbursement of legal fees to Council Member Fitzgerald.
What we don’t know yet
UNVERIFIED: How much has been paid or promised, to which law firm, and on what legal advice. Residents have filed public information requests for the legal opinions, invoices, and communications behind the decision. Every document that comes back gets posted here.
UNVERIFIED: Whether the city obtained a written legal opinion supporting the payment before the vote. If one exists, we want to read it — and so should you.
What we think
OPINION: When the Attorney General has said “never, as a matter of law,” a 3–2 vote — decided by the mayor, to spend your money on one side of a lawsuit about the council’s own composition — deserves a public, plain-English justification. Residents haven’t gotten one.
Where this connects
This decision sits inside a larger story: the lawsuit itself is covered on The May 2 Election, and the man who filed it was taken off the P&Z Commission the same night — see Planning & Zoning.