Texas Supreme Court - Fees - Solid Waste - Dillon's Rule Barry Shanoff, a terrific lawyer and General Counsel of SWANA alerted me to this interesting case from the Supreme Court of Texas. Although the court did not call it Dillon's Rule, it sure seemed as if it was reciting it when it concluded that a general law city in Texas was limited to exercising only its express powers and those powers impliedly necessary to implement an express power. So, does the authority to regulate solid waste include the power to impose fees tied to that regulation? The short answer in Texas seems to be - maybe. If the fees are related and tied to the cost of regulation then they may survive under the facts of the case, but where, as here, the fees were based on a percentage of revenue, they do not. There are a number of interesting questions for the inquiring mind of a municipal lawyer, whether in Texas or elsewhere, that bear some further study. In some instances, I seem to recall a court or two finding that fees themselves are regulatory. If that is the case then one might think fees designed to reduce the waste stream might form a part of the overall regulatory picture. With CATV and all the litigation around FCC regulatory control over local government authority regarding franchising, perhaps, we've strayed from the historical understanding of the authority to franchise. In this case, the city offered an exclusive franchise to one solid waste hauler and sought through licensing to regulate the party involved in the case. But, what if the city had sought to require all entities operating within the city to obtain franchises as opposed to licenses? Could the city have done so? See this older case from Kentucky involving ambulance services and its reference to trash hauling Ray v. City of Owensboro, 415 S.W.2d 77, 79 (Ky. 1967). I don't know the answer, but could there be a lot more authority for local government in franchising? I think we'll need to know as companies seek to use robots on our sidewalks and streets. Builder Recover Services vs. Town of Westlake, Texas Supreme Court, May 20, 2022, https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1454230/210173.pdf. 4th Circuit - Defamation - Social Media Regulation - Police I'm guessing that most police and fire departments have officers who like to text and share gossip as well as joke about their superiors. I'm basing this on some 40 years of life in and around local government and representing police and fire agencies. With the advent of social media, the gossip and joking takes on a larger problem for management because the gossip and joking live on much more than the casual radio and barroom chatter of years gone by. So, in one community, officers engaged in typical conduct that included criticizing the chief, some homophobic chatter, and so on. These criticisms apparently took place on private phones and during off duty hours, but nevertheless management believed them to be violations of the local government's communications policy and the chief recommended termination and the city manager terminated the employees. After termination, the Human Resources director on the manager behalf sought to reinforce the importance of the communication policy and emailed the city's employees letting them know about the firing of several folks for violating policy without naming them. News agencies picked up on this and requested information which led to the city sending them the termination letters each officer received. Shortly thereafter the chief prepared affidavits regarding the matter to be sent to the state's certifying agency regarding the officers' termination. In those affidavits, the chief asserted that the incident came to light due to a complaint. That the court found not to be true. Instead, the court understood the issue came to light when one person was being counselled about conduct who then said something like "well if you think what I did was bad, look at all this email and text chatter from these folks" leading to the investigation into the Plaintiffs' social media. Long story short, the claims against the city and the manager were ultimately dismissed, but the defamation claim against the chief was not. Clearly, the learning lesson here includes establishing a social media policy that you can defend - IMLA worked on a model that is available to members - and be careful not to exaggerate or color the basis of a disciplinary action that is reported or "published" to third parties. Cannon vs. Peck 202382.P.pdf (uscourts.gov)<https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/202382.P.pdf> By the way, don't miss out on the IMLA University City/County summit coming up this July in Tulsa, OK. The program should be terrific, Tulsa is a city with lots of interesting history (and great restaurants) and OK doesn't just mean Oklahoma but means you're missing out if you're not OK in OK. Find out more at www.imla.org/events<http://www.imla.org/events> Charles W. Thompson, Jr. Of Counsel P: (202) 466-5424 x7110 M: (240) 876-6790 D: (202) 742-1016 [facebook icon]<https://www.facebook.com/InternationalMunicipalLawyersAssociation/>[twitter icon]<https://twitter.com/imlalegal>[linkedin icon]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-municipal-lawyers-association-inc./> [logo]<https://imla.org/> 51 Monroe St. Suite 404 Rockville, MD, 20850 www.imla.org<http://www.imla.org/> Plan Ahead! IMLA's 2022 Mid-Year Seminar<https://imla.org/seminars/>, April 8-11, 2022 in Washington, D.C.! IMLA's 2022 Annual<https://imla.org/annual-conference/> Conference, October 19-23, 2022 in Portland, OR! 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