Hospital District board members extend their own terms of office

Words: what do they mean? Who knows sometimes?

Today's example comes from our good friends at the Walker County Hospital District. Way back in March 2022 their meeting agenda included this:

Review and discuss board member term limits. If board is in agreement, then a vote to accept the resolution will be required.

Wow, you must be thinking, here are politicians actually choosing to limit how long they can serve in office. I never thought I'd see the day. And then when you read in the minutes that “4-year term limits” were approved unanimously, you would be even more impressed.

You would, of course, be wrong.

The backstory

Texas has so many “special districts” – hospital districts, water districts, utility districts, improvement districts, etc. – only Rain Man could count them all. There are 123 hospital districts alone. So you'd figure the Texas Legislature would establish a standard legal framework for them all, to govern their elections, contracting ability, etc.

You would, of course, be wrong.

Each special district has its own legislation. It totals over 10,000 pages. It's unbelievable. The Huntsvillan tried running the full text through AI and it shot back “aw, COME ON.” Still, it's clear that the terms of the elected “Managers” of most hospital districts are set at two years.

It was this way in Walker County too. But a different law lets many hospital districts extend these terms to four years on their own.

This is what the Walker County Hospital District was doing in 2022. They weren't limiting how long elected Managers could serve – they were doubling the length of their terms, from two years to four. This process ran to completion in 2024, whose election was for four-year terms.

This all happened under the radar. The Huntsvillan could find nothing informing the public of this change in district communications or other local media, beyond the misleading minutes quoted above.

New law removes ambiguity

Under this system, there was to be no election in 2025 at all. But before that non-election could be not-held, a problem arose. The district's action may not have been legal. Perhaps the law empowering Managers to extend their own terms did not apply to Walker County.

This is stated most plainly by the House Research Organization of the Texas House of Representatives, which provides “impartial information on legislation and issues before the Texas Legislature.” Last year, they stated “concerns have been raised that current law does not authorize the Walker County Hospital District to ... establish four-year terms for its board of managers.”

Enter our new state representative, Huntsvillan Trey Wharton. His bill, HB 2607, in last year's legislature was signed into law in June. It extended our hospital district's term lengths to four years, removing any ambiguity and canceling the 2025 election for sure. Managers elected in 2023 are up for re-election this November, while those elected in 2024 serve until 2028.

Hospital District communications indicate they were the impetus for this legislation. It is not unusual for the electoral procedures of hospital districts to be altered in this manner.

What isn't known is whether this change was supported by the public. The justification given by the Hospital District was to “save community tax dollars by reducing election costs.” But the total amount spent on all five elections held from 2020 to 2024 was only $375, a tiny fraction of the amount spent on the two bond elections held last year.

Those five elections were cheap because they were uncontested. A contested election would cost about $10,000 instead. Voters may consider that a modest price to decide who governs the millions of dollars spent by the district each year.

The most straightforward way to find out would have been for the hospital district to adopt a resolution supporting this change in the law. Doing so in an open meeting would have signaled their intent and invited input through standard procedures for public comment. It's a no-brainer.

Follow the money

This was only half of HB 2607. The Hospital District got into another corner that this law got them out of as well.

In the summer of 2024, the Board of Managers went into “closed session” several times to discuss a potential real estate transaction. This ended that September when they realized that they couldn't legally do what they wanted to do: lease some of their land to a group of local physicians to build an office building.

This practice, called a “land lease” or “ground lease,” isn't unusual in real estate. But the district didn't have the authority to do this, and the permissible leasing period, though longer than most districts', wasn't workable. Land leases usually last a very long time, since the building reverts back to the landlord at the end of the lease.

Wharton's bill solved both problems, such that the district resumed discussions of this real estate project in their meeting last month.

What isn't known are any lease terms. The Huntsvillan spoke with a real estate expert familiar with land leases, who noted that they are “especially susceptible to corruption” when the public sector is involved. As a result, they said, it is vital to have a fair and open process to attract competitors and maximize rental rates.

To see whether such a process is in the offing, The Huntsvillan posed several questions to the Hospital District about this and other issues raised in this article. You might think the district would be eager to help the public understand their methods and motivations. You would, of course, be wrong.

Alison Wilkins contributed background research on hospital district legislation. Similar themes emerge from our previous articles on the hospital district, found here.