BASTROP, Texas — A couple of weeks ago, a petition with hundreds of signatures was submitted to the Bastrop City Clerk, asking to remove Mayor Lyle Nelson from office.
Now Nelson's attorney claims the recall election petition is invalid and the mayor wants to clear his name.
In April, Nelson was given an official reprimand by the Bastrop Ethics Commission.
“You had been put in this office by so many people in this community. You let us down,” Barbara Caldwell, an ethics board member, said.
City council members called for the hearing, claiming Nelson interfered with a financial investigation of the former Visit Bastrop CEO, who was accused of misusing public funds. Nelson was also allegedly having an affair with the CEO and lying about it.
City Councilmember and Mayor Pro Tem John Kirkland told KVUE in July that, by citizens request, they started collecting signatures for a petition to recall the mayor. If the signatures are approved by the city clerk, people could vote in November to remove Nelson.
“The bottom line is there will not be a legal recall election in November 2024. They've taken too long,” Bill Aleshire, Nelson’s attorney, said.
Alshire, an Austin-based attorney who specializes in government transparency cases, said the petition is invalid. He said that's because many pages of it are missing a specific signature from a voter, according to Section 10.07 in the city’s charter.
“It has 96 pages, and 91 of them lack an affidavit that the city charter requires,” he said.
The charter allows petitioners to fix the problem and for the accused to have a hearing on it, but that's supposed to happen 90 days before the election.
“Aug. 7 is 90 days before Nov. 5. It's too late for them to put that on the ballot,” Aleshire said.
The petition aside, Aleshire said the way council members have gone about this has been wrong and inappropriate. He said people like Kirkland accuse the mayor of interfering with the financial investigation because he refused to hand over his personal cellphone, which could have provided evidence of the alleged misuse of funds.
“You don't need someone's private text messages to tell whether or not the money that's been spent, if they know what it was spent for, “ he said.
Aleshire said that because law enforcement was involved, a subpoena could have been ordered to seize Nelson’s phone if they felt it was necessary to complete the financial investigation. He said the Ethics Commission confirmed Nelson wasn't involved in the misuse of funds, knowing about it or sharing confidential information about it.
He also said Nelson lying about his affair isn't the government's business.
“He made a personal, private mistake of having an affair, but that's not grounds for removing a public official from office,” Aleshire said. “It is not against the law for politicians to lie.”
Aleshire said he hopes the petition is dropped because he believes city council members have influenced voters in an unfair, prejudiced way.
“We don't need to have the entire apparatus of city government all tangled up in what is a private mistake and did not affect the public funds or the public government at all,” he said. "So this was all an excuse by John Kirkland and his gang to try to politically embarrass Mayor Nelson and to have him removed from office."
KVUE reached out to the city attorney, who said the city clerk is still working to validate the signatures. They will present their findings at the next city council meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 13.
KVUE also reached out to Kirkland for a comment on this story, but he said he will not comment publicly until the petition validation process is complete.