ATX PULSE 12/16/25 (free) (sponsored by Google AdSense): United Austin PAC Sues CoA Over Rejection of Convention Center Petition // Leander Motorcycle Crash Leaves One Dead // APD Seeks Help in Downtown iPhone, Rolex Theft // Tesla: Driverless Robotaxi Tests Underway in ATX // Halter’s Stellar UT Volleyball Career Comes to an End

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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2025

Compiled by Matt Mackowiak

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WEATHER

Tuesday: H: 60° / L: 39°.

Wednesday: H: 69° / L: 60°.

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TOP NEWS

“Signed complaint: Group sues city to revive anti-convention center petition" Austin Free Press’ Andrew Wheat — Austin United PAC filed a lawsuit Monday against the city of Austin, asking a judge to overturn the city’s rejection of its convention center petition and to force the release of statistical records the city is using to keep the measure off the May 2026 ballot.

The suit contends that City Clerk Erika Brady wrongly disqualified the petition in November after her office sampled about a quarter of the 25,441 signatures and declared that the petition fell an estimated 494 verified signatures short of the 20,000 needed to be put on the spring ballot.

The petition asks voters if they want to put the city’s plans for a new $1.6 billion convention center on hold. It comes as voters are expressing skepticism about the city’s fiscal management and spending on big-ticket items.

With the statutory clock ticking, Austin United is asking for an expedited hearing so a court can direct the city clerk to verify the petition. If the court does that, the Austin City Council could either adopt the petition as an ordinance or put it on the May 2026 ballot. The state deadline to put items on that ballot is Feb. 13.

Austin United’s pleadings assert that Brady improperly disqualified “the signatures of qualified voters who are plainly on the voter rolls or who are otherwise readily identifiable by the information submitted.” It says that the clerk improperly struck signatures of people who printed their names, changed addresses within city limits, or used a post office box. It also claims that the clerk wrongly excluded 315 voters who reside in the city’s extraterritorial and limited purpose jurisdictions.

The lawsuit requests a court order compelling the city to disclose details about the statistical sample used to invalidate the petition. At the center of the case is the city’s refusal to release the sampling information and methodology used to determine that the petition fell short of the requisite 20,000 validated voter signatures.

City Attorney Deborah Thomas told the Austin United in a Nov. 26 letter that the material is not “public information” and that the city “does not have” the data produced by University of Texas statistics professor Thomas Sager. The city paid Sager $875 to produce the analysis, according to city records that Austin Free Press obtained through a separate Public Information Act request.

That disclosure denial has ignited a broader dispute over transparency. Open government advocates argue the city is undermining the intent — if not the letter — of the Texas Public Information Act in not disclosing information that the city paid a private contractor to produce.

“My general statement is that the Public Information Act is intended to be applied broadly in favor of transparency and It would seem, just as a matter of public policy, that this is the kind of thing that should be made public,” said attorney James Hemphill, an open government specialist at Austin-based Graves Dougherty Hearon and Moody.

“If their (city officials’) argument is, ‘Well, no, we contracted with this professor as a private person to do this work for the city,’ you would think that the city would do more” to obtain and provide that information, said Hemphill, who sits on the board of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

To give a definitive opinion on the matter, Hemphill said he would need to review the facts of the case and the city’s claims.

UT journalism lecturer John Bridges is unimpressed with both the petitioners and the city. He said that the petition to delay construction of a new convention center “was kind of crazy given the thing (old convention center) was in ruins at the time.”

Nonetheless, Bridges, a former executive editor of the Austin American-Statesman, faulted the city for not providing the records: “This is certainly a matter of public interest, and it seems to me that that is still a public record that the city would be required to produce under the Public Information Act.

“Farming something out to a third party,” doesn’t change that fact that “it’s still a government record,” he said.

“Show its work”

Instead of releasing the sampling data behind its decision, city officials are seeking an opinion from the Texas Attorney General’s Office to withhold those records. A spokesperson for the city attorney’s office declined Austin Free Press’ requests for interviews, saying, “We don’t have anything further on this topic.” UT Professor Sager also declined to comment.

In a letter to Austin United, city attorneys said they based their denial of the records request in part on a 1990 Attorney General decision that found that a computer program, which a public university used to safeguard the privacy of student records, was not public information.

In a Dec. 9 letter to the Texas Attorney General, who oversees the Public Information Act, the city attorneys also argued that the requested information “implicates the proprietary interests” of Sager’s A&S Enterprises, Inc. The city quoted Sager as saying that, “Each program is an original adaptation by me to the requirements of signature verification systems generally.”

Austin attorney Bill Bunch, who legally represents Austin United PAC in the dispute, disagrees. The city has “an ethical obligation to ‘show its work’. . .to “demonstrate to the public and the 25,000 voters who signed the petition that the sampling review was done with integrity and in full compliance with controlling state law,” Bunch wrote to the city Dec. 3, prior to filing the lawsuit.

“If the random sample was created and utilized with integrity,” he wrote, “the city should be eager to produce it rather than hide it.”

(Austin Free Press)

THE BLOTTER

"Leander motorcycle crash leaves 1 dead" via FOX 7 Austin – Leander police said on Dec. 15, around 4 p.m., officers responded to a crash in the 1200 block of S. Bagdad Rd. Officers said the crash was between an SUV and a motorcycle.

The motorcyclist died from their injuries, police said.

An investigation is underway.

(FOX 7 Austin)

"Family of Georgetown murder victim still seeking answers" via FOX 7 Austin – The family of one of the two men found stabbed to death in a Sun City home is still searching for answers. The investigation into his murder has now stretched past its first week.

It was Friday, Dec. 5, when Georgetown Fire received a call in the retirement community of Sun City. On arrival, they found 76-year-old James Yost dead in a neighbor’s lawn. Inside Yost’s home, first responders found his housemate, 33-year-old Kenneth Clanton, dead as well. Both men were found with what Georgetown PD called "wounds consistent with a cutting instrument."

A day after the homicides, 28-year-old Justice Washington was taken into custody as a person of interest. He was found inside Yost’s car after assaulting an employee at a Domino’s. At the time of their deaths, Washington was living inside the home with Clanton and Yost. According to Clanton’s sisters, all three men were involved in a relationship together. They say one of the men in the house wasn’t approving of the relationship but wouldn’t elaborate on whom.

(FOX 7 Austin)

"Crews respond to fire at abandoned house in northeast Austin" KVUE's None – Crews responded early Tuesday morning to a fire at an abandoned house in northeast Austin.

According to the Austin Fire Department (AFD), responders arrived just before 2:30 a.m. to the fire on 1623 W Parmer Ln.

Once on scene, AFD said the roof of the house collapsed, but crews were able to put out the flames at around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.

No injuries were reported, and the cause of the fire is unknown at this time.

(KVUE)

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