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 to 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 to 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.
The city is not a party to the lawsuit
FACT: The minutes call it “the pending cause brought against him and the City.” The court file says otherwise. The petition’s caption in Cause No. 348-377803-26 reads “MICHAEL BACHAND, Plaintiff/Contestant, v. ROBERT FITZGERALD, Defendant/Contestee.” The City of Westworth Village is not a named party anywhere in the petition. The city’s only exposure is the cost of administering a new election if the contest succeeds.
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. 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.
What the city’s own opinion says
FACT: The written opinion the city relied on, produced only after a complaint to the Attorney General, is the Westfall opinion. It concludes the city may pay counsel to protect the city’s own interests, chiefly the cost of administering a second election if the contest succeeds, while conceding the city “is prohibited from defending a candidate’s title to office.” The minutes, though, record a vote to reimburse Fitzgerald’s fees. The opinion and the minutes describe two different actions, and only one of them is blessed by the opinion.
FACT: The document’s own dates are worth noting: its cover is dated July 10, 2026, its page-4 header reads June 22, 2026, and the Cantey Hanger engagement letter was not signed until July 7, 2026. The vote it discusses happened June 18. Open the PDF and check page 4 yourself.
OPINION: Whatever explains the two dates, no version of them puts a signed, written opinion in front of the council before it voted. The justification came after the decision.
What we don’t know yet
UNVERIFIED: How much has been paid or promised, to which law firm, and for whose defense. Residents have filed public information requests for the invoices and engagement records behind the decision. Every document that comes back gets posted here.
What we think
OPINION: When the Attorney General has said “never, as a matter of law,” a 3 to 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. And with the city not a party to the suit, “defending the city” doesn’t supply it.
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.