HOOD COUNTY EXPRESS INVESTIGATES 👇🏼
CITY ATTORNEY'S RECALL EXPLANATION MATCHES OFFICIALS' LAWSUIT. BUT THE LAW CONTAINS NO SUCH CALENDAR REQUIREMENT.
Granbury City Attorney Jeremy SoRelle told residents to disregard "social media political analysis" while pointing to the unpublished May 2027 election calendar as a reason the city had not ordered its recall election.
But the governing election provisions and Granbury's charter contain no requirement to wait for that calendar.
Granbury Charter Section 4.08 requires the council to order a recall election when the officer does not resign. It contains no calendar-publication condition.
The Secretary of State correspondence provided to the Express raises that exact issue:
"I appreciate your prompt response, so do I understand that there is nothing in the State regulations that would prevent the city from ordering the election prior to the official calendar being posted by the Secretary of State?"
Meanwhile, the same calendar condition appears in the officials' lawsuit.
Mayor Jim Jarratt, Bruce Wadley and Skip Overdier filed against their own city on October 6.
Paragraph 22(i) asks a judge to declare that the city's duty to order the recall does not begin until the Secretary of State publishes the calendar.
Paragraph 22(ii) asks to allow waiting until the anticipated February 12, 2027 ordering deadline, expressly giving the court several months to consider their challenge.
The officials are asking a court to recognize the very condition SoRelle presented publicly as a reason to wait.
Proper notices remain required. But neither the cited state ordering law nor Granbury's recall provision requires waiting for a published calendar.
Putting that condition in a lawsuit does not make it law.
