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Former State Rep. Joe Pickett sued the City of El Paso in October 2020 for charging an illicit fee on our water bills that funds an eight-figure slush fund.
He prevailed in both the 384th District Court and the 8th Court of Appeals, which ruled the fee is an “illegal tax.”
The City has until November 4 to decide whether to petition the Supreme Court of Texas for review.
We wanted to know how much the City has spent defending its illegal tax, so we filed an open records request on July 22 demanding “a complete accounting of all the City’s costs for
litigating against Joe Pickett over the franchise fee on our water bills.” We asked for “invoices and receipts for all legal bills related to litigation against Joe Pickett from October 1, 2020 to the present day..”
One week later, the City wrote to the Texas Attorney General in an attempt to prevent us from obtaining the information but on October 2 Ken Paxton ruled in our favor.
The City then provided us with documentation showing it paid Windle Hood Norton Brittain & Jay LLP a total of $30,247.87 for legal work between March 11, 2023 and June 10, 2026.
The City paid an additional $11,024 to Kemp Smith Law for work performed between June 11 and June 30, 2026.
Thus, the total expenditure so far is $41,271.87.
We do not understand why we did not receive any invoices for outside counsel for the period between October 2020 and February 2023, when the City was already in litigation, so we wrote to Jackie Leyva, Public Records Supervisor, for clarification. Levya insisted, “There are no invoices prior to 2023. We have provided you with all the invoices from 2023 up until the date of your request, July 22, 2026.”
If Leyva is correct, that can only mean that much of the litigation was handled by the Office of the City Attorney, at least during the district court phase.
We hope the City will settle with Mr. Pickett and stop wasting taxpayer dollars defending what the courts have confirmed is an “illegal tax.”
So far, the Mayor and City Council have remained silent on this issue.
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