Project Connect trial to resume after Paxton appeal rejected

Editor’s note: The original version of this story contained an error conflating two of AG Ken Paxton’s opinions. The story has now been corrected.

A little over a year ago, a group of prominent Austin citizens filed suit against the Austin Transit Partnership over Project Connect, the 2020 transit expansion that was originally designed to yield 20.2 miles of light rail, subway and new rapid bus routes. The suit was legally supported in part by a 2023 opinion of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s.

Back in 2022, because of changes in cost estimates due to design tweaks and inflation, ATP had to pare the project down to a now 9.8-mile line, with no subway and no lines to the airport. 

Those changes were the central conceit of the lawsuit – filed by Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, and burger restaurant Dirty Martin’s, among others – in November 2023. The plaintiffs claimed that, since voters didn’t in fact approve the design as it stands now, the city can’t use property taxes to pay for it. This echoes a May 2023 opinion of Paxton’s that says ATP can’t use city “maintenance and operations” taxes to finance debt.

A joint trial bringing together that suit and a bond validation suit filed by ATP in February to validate the funding structure was scheduled for June 17, but Paxton stalled it by filing an interlocutory appeal the same day. On Oct. 8, the 15th Court of Appeals dismissed Paxton’s appeal, which argued that ATP, as a nonprofit, didn’t have jurisdiction to bring forth a bond validation lawsuit.

This means that the trial may now go forward, unless Paxton files another appeal.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mayor Kirk Watson wrote, “The decision by the Fifteenth Court of Appeals exposes Ken Paxton’s jurisdictional challenge as a blatant delay tactic. I want this case to go to trial because the facts and the law are on our side, which is exactly why Ken Paxton wants to keep it tangled up in the legal weeds.”

If the case is to remain stalled in the courts at the start of the next legislative session, Paxton could have a better chance of quashing Project Connect. Some of its main opponents are anti-Austin Republicans in the Legislature, who tried last session to derail the project. The few Republicans who countered that effort largely lost their March primary elections, thanks to Paxton’s well-funded smear campaigns. 

“Austin Transit Partnership and the City of Austin filed bond validation proceedings so that we could have an impartial judge confirm that we have complied with state law at every step in moving Project Connect forward,” ATP’s Executive Vice President of Legal Affairs Casey Burack said in a statement to the Monitor. “We appreciate that the 15th Court of Appeals has acted quickly to dismiss the Attorney General’s meritless appeal of its baseless jurisdictional challenge, and look forward to our day in court. ATP will continue to advance Austin Light Rail with our community.”

“It will speak volumes about the strength of Ken Paxton’s argument if he continues to stall a decision by appealing to the Texas Supreme Court,” Watson’s post concluded. “Let’s go to trial.”

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