Closing Arguments? Not Exactly

Fayette County Judge candidates Josh Homan and Josh Vandever appeared together one last time before the May 26 runoff election at a Town Hall meeting in Schulenburg on Tuesday.

The event was a cordial affair. They sat on stools flanked by a pair of ferns with a bucket of Shiner beers between them. They fielded about 15 questions submitted by the public and then mingled with the audience afterwards.

One of the questions asked the candidates about their ideas for unifying the Commissioners Court, elected officials and communities within Fayette County.

In answering the question, Homan drew on his past experience as an officer in the U.S. Army “Leadership in general is moving somebody from one position to another position in order to go somewhere,” Homan said. “And the hardest part of leadership is leading when you don’t have direct authority, which in many cases the county judge does not. Those county commissioners – they have their own opinions. They were elected by people who gave them mandates or didn’t give them mandates. So they are permitted, obviously, to have different opinions than me. I am not always correct.

“Teams that I’ve led in the past, whether it was a 268man aviation company or a small business team, it starts with trust,” he added. “And the only way you can develop trust is to develop some sort of mutual respect and shared understanding. It’s not trust like, ‘Hey, I trust you.’ That’s not what I’m talking about. But it’s like, ‘I know that Homan guy, though we might disagree, he has my back. He’s not going to go stabbing. He’s not going to run around. He’s not going to go do something behind the scenes to somehow subvert my efforts.’” Vandever said more discussion and decision-making needs to take place in Commissioners Court meetings. He spoke about a leadership trait he learned from former County Judge Joe Weber.

“Something that I thought was a really interesting tactic when I was hired as EMS director, was Judge Weber used to do this thing where for the first couple times he did it, I was just stupefied,” Vandever said. “In the commissioner’s courtroom, because the man would ask me a question that he asked me two days ago in his office, I would answer it very briefly. He would not be happy with that. He would want me to go through the whole thing we just litigated in his office two days prior.

“That kind of thing is necessary,” Vandever continued. “That kind of thing allows everybody to have the kind of informed consent and the information to make good decisions and then communicate the consequences of those decisions back to their constituents in their individual precincts. And it needs to happen more in the courtroom. So that’s something that I would commit to.”

Another question to the candidates asked about regulating trail rides, two of which ended in shooting deaths in the past year. Homan answered first.

“I know that the Commissioner’s Court has restricted to some degree the number of individuals who can gather, and those are all good steps,” Homan said. “However, there’s a fundamental problem with any of these things: people who obey the law obey the law; people who don’t obey the law, you can make a law, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to follow it.

“I’m not against trail rides, but we need lawful activities of all kinds,” Homan added. “So whatever it is – trail rides are kind of what’s on people’s minds right now – how would the county find out about this trail ride? Why would those people who are committing crimes be honest about the trail ride that they’re having? And then what consequences do they face beyond just the consequences of breaking laws, like murder? I don’t mean that jokingly, but the problem is the county would have to be informed. It would have to know what was going on in order to regulate or govern that event. And frankly, I don’t know that we have the systems to really do that right now.

“So I think what we need to do is uphold law and order across the board, uphold our ordinances and policies as best we can,” Homan continued. “And when somebody commits a crime, they should pay and face the consequences for that crime.”

Vandever said the County has consulted with attorneys and the Texas Association of Counties for advice about this topic.

“Unfortunately, we’re running our heads up against brick walls,” Vandever said. “We’ve had two homicides in this county in the last seven months. They’ve both been at trail rides. The Sheriff’s Office could line every single one of their patrol cars, call in a few troopers, and fly a helicopter over, but if they do not have a criminal penalty to enforce, they cannot do anything.”

Vandever said the State Legislature needs to give counties more authority to regulate large gatherings of people.

“Many people in this room would be surprised to know that the law that allows us to govern trail rides is the Texas Health and Safety Code,” Vandever said. “It’s not even the Penal Code. It’s not even in the Code of Criminal Procedure. It’s the Health and Safety Code, and it has more paragraphs about porta- potties and handwashing stations and food vendor permits than it does about police and ambulance safety and fire safety. So until we get those code documents researched and addressed for this rising problem that is happening in Brookshire, in Waller, all over the place, that’s the mechanism we have.”

The Fayette County Record livestreamed the event on our Facebook page, https:// www.facebook.com/fcr.news.

You can watch the recording on YouTube at https://youtu. be/fA7Pr-cHii8.

The runoff election takes place May 26. Early voting runs from Monday, May 18, through May 22, from 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. at the Fayette County Elections Office, located at 275 S. Ellinger Rd. in La Grange.

Election Day voting will be at the 12 voting precincts across the County from 7 a.m.-7 p.m.