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Lockhart residents overwhelmingly voted to decriminalize weed. The city won't do it.

A lighter and a jar of marijuana on a white countertop.
Julia Reihs
/
KUT News
Despite 68% of Lockhart residents voting in favor of decriminalizing marijuana in November, the city announced it will continue enforcing marijuana laws.

HalleyAnna Finlay spent months last year campaigning for the Lockhart Freedom Act, a referendum to decriminalize possessing 4 ounces or less of marijuana.

Finlay and the team at Ground Game Texas, the social justice organization behind the ballot measure, sent thousands of texts and knocked on hundreds of doors to encourage people to vote. On Nov. 5, it seemed like it was all worth it when 68% of Lockhart residents voted in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.

But then Finlay got a phone call.

“The City Council just decided they weren’t going to go with it with no real explanation,” she said.

In early December, the Lockhart City Council voted in a closed session to not codify the Lockhart Freedom Act into the city's constitution, arguing it conflicts with state and federal law.

In response, Finlay and dozens of other campaigners and community members brought boxes of fresh pizza to Lockhart City Council’s meeting on Thursday, all cut to 68% of the pie.

“Our free meal aims to creatively remind local officials of the overwhelming popularity of the referendum among Lockhart voters, which a few of these council members are daring to undemocratically disregard, despite the clear election results,” Sam Benavides, managing editor of the Caldwell/Hays Examiner and protest organizer said.

Lockhart City Attorney Brad Bullock said the referendum is too much of a legal question mark to codify into city law and puts the city at risk of a lawsuit.

“Now, that’s not a position that officers want to be in. It’s not a position this council wants to be in … but that’s the reality,” Bullock said.

There is precedent for Bullock's concern. Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuits against Austin, San Marcos and three other Texas cities early last year for passing similar decriminalization measures.

“My job as the city attorney is to try to keep my client, the city of Lockhart, out of the courtroom,” Bullock said. “I don’t want them to get sued if we can avoid it by the proponents of the charter amendment, and I don’t want them to get sued by the state of Texas because that’s a cost that you the taxpayers have to bear.”

Finlay said she wants Lockhart to be on the “fightin' side” of the issue.

The lawsuits in Austin and San Marcos were both dismissed last summer, and residents in support of the Lockhart referendum say it’s up to a court to decide its legality, not the City Council.

Lockhart Police Chief Gary Williamson said the decriminalization amendment poses another issue for him: it would axe the police’s ability to use marijuana as a “tool” to investigate other crimes.

“Often during a traffic stop we’ll use the odor of marijuana as probable cause for searching a vehicle,” Williamson said at Thursday’s meeting. “At times that will reveal other crimes, whether that be possession of a weapon, evidence of a burglary.”

Lockhart resident Dorothy Jennings said using marijuana as grounds for suspicion has led to vast inequality in the city, and that she’s experienced it first hand.

Jennings, a Black woman, said she was arrested in Lockhart for possessing marijuana after a traffic stop in the early 2000s and was subsequently put on probation. A friend of hers who was not Black faced a similar situation and only got a ticket, she said.

“The fact of the matter is, it is decriminalized already, just to certain people,” Jennings said.

Jennings said it's difficult to get people to first register to vote and then follow through at the polls, and what's happening now will likely further discourage people.

"With them winning this and then [City Council] overturning — it just shows that their vote does not count," she said.

This isn’t the first time Lockhart City Council has tried to fiddle with the Lockhart Freedom Act.

After the proposition got enough signatures to appear on the ballot last fall, the City Council tried to break it up into 13 separate measures that would have taken up a page on the ballot.

Voters on both sides of the issue showed up in defense of one concise measure to vote on, and the council relented.

Lockhart City Council Member John Lairsen said the dais should take another vote on the issue at their next meeting, this time publicly.

“I’ve heard so many times that our credibility and transparency are being questioned, and I don’t want that, I don’t think any of us wants that,” Lairsen said. “I think we owe it to our citizens to present this in front of them.”

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