The Commissioners Court wants to deed land to one of the VFDs at less than fair market value and without going through either auction or sealed bid procedures. While there is little doubt that it is in the public's benefit to do such, I have not been able to find any statutory authority allowing this exception. I would greatly appreciate your input on this subject.

Sorry giving a private organization a "thing of value" violates the Texas Constitution. The procedures to sell county property have been called exclusive and failure to follow such procedures results in void and voidable transactions.

Thank you for your input. I know this will suprise those of you dealing with commissioner courts but they put the deed on the agenda inspite of a written legal opinion saying "no".

Funny you should ask...

Assume, hypothetically, that many years and several county commissioners ago, one of our VFD's needed a new station. Suppose they found a piece of land at the right price, but they did not have the funds to construct a building. Perhaps they worked out a deal with the County, whereby the County bought the land outright and built the building using County funds. The VFD would likely have made payments to the County for several years, fully reimbursing the County's expenditure. Now, imagine that they want the title to the land (including the buidling) put into their name. Faced with this situation, I, as the County's crack civil attorney, would probably have objected, since conveying the property could be construed as transferring County property to a private VFD without going through the bidding process. I might also be concerned with a de facto extension of County credit to a private organization. Were this to happen, I am sure you could imagine that the VFD would be displeased with having, in their minds, paid for a facility which the County now claims as its own. (You might even substitute the word "apoplectic" for "displeased" in the previous sentence.) I would also imagine that the County would want to transfer the property and might be mildly perturbed with the F*&^ing lawyer and his Dumb@#s opinions.

How would you write the conclusion to this hypothetical dilemma? And assume it is on the agenda for next week's Commissioners Court meeting.

Given that the statutes clearly and unequivocally state that inappropriate real property transactions are void or voidable your commissioners are up a creek. The only possible out I can think of, assuming some annual funding by commissioners court, is that instead of providing annual funding by contract the parties agree that the funds will be escrowed and applied to purchase at future date. You might also contact the A.G.'s intergovernmental affairs atty. at (800)252-5476.