Lies, Power, and Austin City Limits: How City Council Rewrote History to Steal Control Over Shoreline Properties

George Orwell’s 1984 describes a world where the ruling political party repeatedly rewrites history to benefit current party leaders. The party’s slogan declares, “Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.”

You might think that kind of political abuse happens only in faraway countries.

Think again.

It’s happening in our own backyard.

It doesn’t matter which political party is in charge. The will to power—and the temptation to lie about history—infects individuals and groups on both left and right, in offices high and low.

Today we’ll describe how left-wing extremists in Austin attempted to rewrite history to deprive hundreds of landowners of basic constitutional and property rights. Next week, we’ll tell the story of how right-wingers attempted something similar to take advantage of a poor minority community on the Gulf Coast.

Here’s what happened in Austin. 

Narrow strips of shoreline property are annexed to the City in 1891 and inundated in 1940.

The story starts in 1891. That’s when the Texas Legislature added some narrow strips of land along the Colorado River to Austin’s city limits so that Austin could build the first dam across the river. Those strips of land were about 28 feet wide, measured from the lake level of the first Austin Dam. Floodwaters washed out the first dam; another flood washed out the second.

When the Tom Miller Dam was finished in 1940, the new lake level was much higher than with previous dams. The original 28-foot strips were underwater.

The City repeatedly recognizes that the new shoreline is outside Austin’s city limits.

City maps from the 1940s showed the new shoreline was outside Austin’s city limits. In the 1960s, after City staff confirmed the old 28-foot strips were underwater, City Council recognized that if the City tried to annex and tax the new shoreline properties, Texas law would entitle the properties to full municipal services, including water and sewer.

City Council decided that extending municipal services would cost too much, so the landowners continued finding other ways to get basic services—just as they had always done.

The City attempts to tax the new shoreline, recognizes its mistake, and annexes the new shoreline into its “limited-purpose jurisdiction” in 1986.

In 1985, someone in the City tax assessor’s office put the shoreline properties on the City’s property-tax rolls for the first time ever. The landowners objected, pointing out that their properties weren’t in the City at all and that, if they were, the City needed to provide full services before it could tax their land.

City Council responded by passing a 1986 ordinance declaring that the shoreline properties were within the City’s “limited-purpose jurisdiction.” This meant that the shoreline properties would technically be inside Austin’s city limits, but wouldn’t receive full municipal services and therefore couldn’t be taxed.

The Texas Legislature automatically disannexes the shoreline properties in 1988.

By 1987, the Texas Legislature recognized that Austin and other municipalities had been abusing their annexation powers.

One of the 1987 annexation reforms squarely addressed the situation on Lake Austin. Strips of land along navigable streams (like Lake Austin) that had been annexed for limited purposes (like the 1986 City Council ordinance had done to the shoreline properties) would be automatically disannexed—unless the municipality annexed those strips into its “full-purpose jurisdiction” and provided full services before the end of 1988.

Austin didn’t do any of that, so Texas law automatically disannexed the shoreline properties in 1988. This meant they were 100% outside Austin’s city limits. 

The 2019 City Council rewrites history to steal control—and taxing power—over the new shoreline properties.

Austin didn’t give up. The value of the shoreline properties kept going up and up. And, to City politicians, they looked more and more fun to tax.

In 2019, a self-described socialist on City Council and a journalist from Austin’s largest newspaper claimed, in a series of newspaper articles, that mansions along Lake Austin were getting an unfair tax break.

Council members—including Austin’s former mayor, who (ironically) had made his fortune representing landowners and landowner rights in eminent-domain cases—felt political pressure to soak the rich. 

What did City Council do in response? 

City Council could have looked at the history—as previous councils had done—and seen that the land was completely outside Austin’s city limits. Council also could have tried to annex the shoreline properties, but the City would have needed landowner consent to do so, and Council knew the landowners would never agree to that.

So rather than be responsible and honest about history, the 2019 City Council caved to political pressure. Council enacted a dishonest ordinance declaring that the shoreline properties had been within the City’s full-purpose jurisdiction at “all times since 1891.” In other words, Council attempted to rewrite history to change this land’s legal status retroactively. 

The landowners sue the City and win the right to assert their claims in federal court.

That end-run around the Legislature clearly violated Texas law—and made this a federal case. Under the U.S. Constitution, the City could not change property interests retroactively. Nor could the City abridge property interests without notice or hearing. And the City denied the landowners the equal protection of the laws by (1) failing to afford them the same annexation processes that it gave to everybody else, and (2) denying basic City services while taxing those properties. 

More than 300 sets of landowners sued the City in federal court.

For years, the City attempted to play a shell game. The City argued that the landowners couldn’t sue the City anywhere for violating their statutory and constitutional rights. The City claimed that the Texas Attorney General and Travis County District Attorney were the only people who could sue the City in state court. And the City contended that it couldn’t be sued in federal court because the landowners’ claims would interfere with the collection of local taxes.

But a recent decision from a federal appeals court ended the City’s game. Federal courts will now hear the landowners’ claims against the City.

While the rest of the story remains to be written, this legal decision is a big win for our clients and the rule of law.

It’s a reminder of the importance of an independent judiciary: judges who are free to look at the law and actual history, not bow to the self-serving stories of politicians who care more about holding onto power than standing for the truth and real public service.

Cobb & Johns are Special Forces for Complex Property and Government Disputes.