Facts: County owned hospital, the members of the governing board are appointed by the commissioner's court for 2 years terms. One of the board members wants to file for commissioner. Does he automatically resign upon filing? To further confuse the issue, his current term expires Dec. 31, 2003 and he wants to be re-appionted to another term on the board while he is running for commissioner in 2004. All the resign to run info I can find only relates to elected officials not appointed ones. Am I missing something?

[This message was edited by mhartman on 12-04-03 at .]

[This message was edited by mhartman on 12-04-03 at .]

Mike, do you think your hospital district would agree to provide you with antacid au gratisfor all the trouble you seem to have with them?

There is authority for the proposition that a member of the board of managers of a county hospital occupies an "office of emolument" within the purview of article 16, section 40 of the Constitution (the prohibition against dual officeholding). See Op. Tex. Att'y Gen. LO 97-100 (1997). Whether that would apply to your district's board members may be open to debate. Ultimately, your board member probably is not constitutionally precluded from holding both offices, as a county commissioner is expressly excluded from the dual officeholding prohibition by article 16, section 40(a). Incompatibility, however, probably prevents him from remaining on the board.

Generally speaking I would hesitate to accept any medical treatment from a county hospital. However, antacid may be an exception.

Scott, with as much trouble as I seem to give them back, I would probably be charged double.

I am not worried about the incompatability issue as the hosp. board member will resign from the board if elected commissioner. My guestion is can he still serve on the board after he announces he is running for commissioner and during the campaign? The hospital is a county owned hosp. and not a hospital district, therefore the board members are appointed by the comm. court.Sec. 263 H&S code.

Once again, I may be missing something in your previous answer.
Of couse, my advice is to resign when he announces to avoid all these issues but, our hosp. is going through some difficult times and he wants to stay on the board to help impliment the plan created to fix the problems.

I cannot find any info on the issue of an appointed board member having to resign. the constitutional provision I looked at listed the offices specifically and an appointed hosp. board member was not on it.Art 16 sec. 65 if memory serves.
Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

I completely misread your question. I wish I could say that was novel. You're correct about the provision of article 16, section 65. Since board members aren't in the enumerated list of subject officers, I think you've answered your own question. For support, you can look to the construction tenet that is cast in officious-sounding latin, which I can't remember, but which says that what is not included is excluded.

To your credit, once you get the question you usually have a pretty good answer. I just wanted reassurance that I had not overlooked any of those obscure county laws, as I have been known to do in the past.
I keep thinking the longer I do this eventually I will run upon a question I have firmly answered before instead of these novel-to-me issues of which I have only limited knowlege. If that ever happens, I'm sure my memory will fail and I'll have to start form scratch again anyway.
Thanks for the help!
Will you be in San Antonio next week?

No matter how long you have been at this you never get the exact same question twice. By the way the Latin phrase is "expressio unius est exclusio alterius". Et tu Brumley.

I echo Ray's take, although his command of Latin is significantly better than mine (anything more than per se or et sequitur simply befuddles me. On the other hand, I've got a pretty good handle on bad language in Spanish).

To Ray: Then fall, civil litigator!