I haven't located any competitive bidding criminal cases after a quick search. My concern is whether or not such a violation (which is a misdemeanor) would nonetheless be tried in district court as a generic official misconduct crime. Any advice or experience along these lines would be much appreciated.

Section 262.033, Local Government Code, provides the primary offenses relating to competitive bidding and purchasing procedures. If the purchasing at issue related to construction, repair or renovation of a structure, road, highway or other improvement or addition to real property (more than $25,000), section 271.029 comes into play. The major offenses under those sections are class B misdemeanors. However, sections 262.035 and 271.030 both provide that conviction of those "major" offenses effect an immediate removal from office or employment of the defendant. As to an elected official, article 5, section 24 of the Texas Constitution requires a jury trial and fixes jurisdiction to order removal in district court. Thus, arguably, to construe the purchasing offenses in a constitutional manner with respect to elected officials, the matter should be tried in district court and the way to shoehorn that into the Code of Criminal Procedure's jurisdictional structure would be to interpret them as "official misconduct" offenses. At least that's my hip-shot view without the benefit of any supporting case law. I'm not sure the argument has the same force with respect to employees (as opposed to elected officials).

Thanks, Scott, for your opinion and reasoning. I've never had to prosecute a bid violation but I run into bid violation complaints on public officials from time to time. I only handle felonies and our CA handles the misdemeanors. If we have to file one, I'm not sure if I have jurisdiction as "official misconduct" or if the CA handles them since they are misdemeanors. I'm not looking forward to prosecuting one (frankly, I have enough murders, robberies, etc., to keep us quite busy) but they tell me that's why I get the big bucks... Thanks again, Scott.

For official misconduct cases, the CA and DA have concurrent jurisdiction. In the case of a close question, such as what you raise, the simple answer is to have the CA handle it in county court.

Thanks, John! I agree that the CA is the safest bet... and that certainly suits me fine.

I agree with John. Your CA is the next stop as the prosecutor with misdemeanor jurisdiction. I'm sure he/she will be thrilled at the prospect. If the prospective defendant is not an elected official, it would appear that the matter could be litigated in county court.